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2001 "The Littleit C y in Itself ": Middle-Class Aspirations in Bangor, Maine, 1880-1920 Sara K. Martin

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Recommended Citation Martin, Sara K., ""The Little itC y in Itself": Middle-Class Aspirations in Bangor, Maine, 1880-1920" (2001). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 197. http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/etd/197

This Open-Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UMaine. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UMaine. "THE LITTLE CITY IN ITSELF": MIDDLE-CLASS ASPIRATIONS

IN BANGOR, MAINE, 1880-1920

By Sara K. Martin

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Martha McNamara

An Abstract of the Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (in History) December, 2001

This thesis examines the inception and growth of "the Little City in Itself," a residential neighborhood in Bangor, Maine, as a case study of middle-class suburbanization and domestic life in small cities around the turn of the twentieth century. The development of Little City is the story of builders' and residents' efforts to shape a middle-class neighborhood in a small American city, a place distinct from the crowded downtown neighborhoods of immigrants and the elegant mansions of the wealthy. The purpose of this study is to explore builders' response to the aspirations of the neighborhood's residents for home and neighborhood from 1880 to 1920, and thus to provide insight into urban growth and ideals of family life in small American cities. This examination advances two interrelated arguments. First, it complicates the narrative of suburbanization that has been presented by urban historians, which has relied on the study of metropolitan areas. Bangor inhabitants moved to the periphery of the city in a later period than the denizens of larger cities and the districts they created were not as strictly homogenous by class. Second, it suggests a more complex interpretation of domestic architecture as a reflection of changes in ideal family relationships around the turn of the twentieth century than offered by architectural historians. This study reveals that the builders of Little City constructed houses that contained both traditional and progressive elements, rather than merely replicating older forms or indiscriminately adopting house plans that were submitted in advice literature. The creation of this community occurred as the result of a complex relationship between developers, builders and residents.

The dialog between the builders and residents produced the urban form and domestic architecture of Little City. Lot plans and deeds, local newspaper and business journal articles and advertisements, and historical maps provided insight into the developers' real estate activities and plans for the neighborhood.

Census and city tax data, along with city directories, furnished information about the residents of Little City and revealed their social and economic standing in the community, allowing for a class analysis of the district. A field study of the floor plans of houses in the neighborhood, as well as house plan books and household manuals from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, demonstrated that the builders of these houses incorporated both contemporary and conservative ideas into their designs in their attempt to recruit the middle class to the area.

The evolution of a rural landscape at the periphery of the city of Bangor in the late nineteenth century to a fashionable middle-class neighborhood in the beginning of the twentieth century reveals how builders and residents responded to societal changes, and how suburbanization and the transformation of domestic architecture differed in small cities from larger metropolises. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the Association of Graduate Students and the History

Department at the University of Maine for travel funding to present an earlier draft of portions of this paper at the Vernacular Architecture Forum and the American

Studies Association, where I received valuable comments and suggestions about my arguments.

I also wish to thank Betsy Paradis and Kathy Corridan at Special

Collections at Fogler Library at the University of Maine for their many trips to the recesses of the library to retrieve heavy tax ledgers, and for their guidance in finding other useful archives. I am indebted to the Interlibrary Loan librarians at

Fogler, as well, for resolutely tracking down countless articles for me. Thanks, too, go to the reference librarians at the Bangor Public Library, particularly Molly

Larsen, Cindy Todd, and Bill Cook, for cheerfully finding many pieces of information on Bangor History. For helping find photographs, for gathering odd bits of information, and especially for their friendship, I am grateful to Dana Lippitt and Susan Smith of the Bangor Historical Society.

Members of my writing group, comprised of other graduate students in the

History Department, helped me to refine my arguments, and more importantly, to clarify my thinking about houses, people, culture and history. I want to thank Lisa

Scofield, Peter Morrison, Kathy Hoving, David Klinge, Josh Smith, and especially

Micah Pawling, who saw this project through from its inception to its completion. I would also like to thank fellow graduate students Kim Seebold, Mary Ellen

Barnes, Lynn Manion, Nancy Alexander, Anu Dudley, and Cynthia Richardson for their support. I am also grateful to Shanon Loftus for her assistance with

Microsoft Access. It is very possible this thesis would have been significantly delayed if she had not been available to answer my questions.

Marli Weiner and Richard Judd, members of my thesis committee, provided many helpful suggestions for resources and challenged my analyses, leading to a much better thesis than I would have produced without their help. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Martha McNamara, for providing insightful criticism of many earlier drafts of this thesis, for sharpening my intellectual skills, and for giving me the idea for the thesis in the first place. She has been an enthusiastic supporter of the project as well as a penetrating critic, and has become a friend along the way.

Finally, I want to thank my husband and my daughter, Rick and Jordan

Borgman. Rick has helped in hundreds of ways, from editing suggestions and assistance with computer glitches to countless loads of laundry and grocery shopping trips. Mainly, he has given me the time and space to research and write, and has maintained steadfast interest in the topic. He has also given me the occasional nudge I needed to move it closer to completion. Jordan has allowed her mom to spend many hours at work on this project without complaint, even though it cost her visits to the park and time to play on the computer. She

also did a great job helping prepare the maps. Both of them have been

unwavering in their love and support. TABLE OF CONTENTS

... ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... III

LIST OF TABLES...... vi

LIST OF FIGURES ...... vii

INTRODUCTION...... 1

CHAPTER 1: "This Popular Neighborhoodn:The Building of "The Little City in Itself"...... I 1

CHAPTER 2: "The Right Kind of Peoplen:The Spatial Segregation of the Middle Class in Bangor ...... 56

CHAPTER 3: "The Right Kind of Housesn: Domestic Arrangements in Little City ...... -88

EPILOGUE...... -127

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 129

APPENDICES...... -142

Appendix A. Occupational Distribution of Little City Residents, 1900- 1920...... -143

Appendix B. Place of Work and Homeownership of Little City Residents, 1900-1920...... -147

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR...... 150 LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Class Composition of Little City Heads of Households, 1880-1920...... -69

Table 2. Class Composition of Residential Districts in Bangor, 1901-1920 ...... 71

Table 3. Average House Valuation by Class, 1900-1920...... 81

Table B.l Percentage of Little City Household Heads Who Worked Downtown, 1900-1920...... I48

Table B.2 Rate of Homeownership of Little City Residents, 1900-1920...... -149 vii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure1. Littlecity...... 2

Figure 2 . Street map from 1899 Directory of Bangor and Brewer ...... 13

Figure 3 . 1837 Engraving of Bangor...... 16

Figure 4 . Advertisement for Thomas A . White, lumber supply merchant...... 16

Figure 5 . Examples of Bangor's mid-nineteenth century mansions ...... 18

Figure 6 . The Irish quarter near Hancock and York Streets in Bangor ...... 18

Figure 7 . Concentration of the lrish population in mid-nineteenth century Bangor...... -20

Figure 8 . 1875 Atlas of Penobscot County map of Bangor and Veazie ...... 21

Figure 9 . Downtown Bangor in 1897. View of the Kenduskeag Stream and the Franklin Street bridge ...... 22

Figure 10 . Joseph Carr's lot plan for the former "Smart Farm" ...... 24

Figure 11 . 1875 Atlas of Penobscot County map of Bangor and Brewer...... 26

Figure 12 . Weston's lot plan for Bellevue and Norfolk Streets ...... 27

I Figure 13 . Kirstein's. Waterman's. and Hamlin's lot plan...... 31

Figure 14 . Matthew Lincoln's lot plan...... 33

Figure 15 . Bangor Streetcar ...... 36

Figure 16 . Bangor Street Railway map ...... 38

Figure 17 . Louis Kirstein's speculative houses ...... 42

Figure 18 . William Hallett's speculative houses...... 44

Figure 19 . William Hallett's first house ...... 45

Figure 20 . Hyde Park advertisement...... 47 viii

Figure 21 . Fairmount lot plan ...... 50

Figure 22 . Fairmount lot sale ...... 51

Figure 23 . Service Industries in Little City ...... 64

Figure 24 . 1875 Atlas of Penobscot County map of Bangor's east side ...... 65

Figure 25 . 1875 Bird's Eye View of the City of Bangor ...... 67

Figure 26 . Architect-designed houses on Montgomery Street ...... 73

Figure 27 . Louis Kirstein's house on Center Street ...... 74

Figure 28 . Little City loop of Bangor Street Railway ...... 77

Figure 29 . Ideal house plan form the 1880s...... 90

Figure 30 . A bungalow from the 1910s...... 90

Figure 31 . Little City hybrid plans ...... 91

Figure 32 . Louis Kirstein and Sons' advertisement for houses in Fairmount. c . 1908...... 93

Figure 33 . Floor plan and perspective view of an 1880s house...... 95

Figure 34. Stair hall...... -96

Figure 35 . Parlor...... -97

Figure 36 . A late Victorian-era library as a "sitting room" ...... 99

Figure 37 . A late Victorian-era library as a "den"...... 99

Figure 38 . A late Victorian-era kitchen...... 101

Figure 39 . "An efficiently designed kitchenn...... 104

Figure 40 . "The Electric Servanr ...... 106

Figure 41 . A Little City family. c . 1900...... 107

Figure 42 . Floor plan and perspective view of an early twentieth-century house ...... 1 10 Figure 43 . An early twentieth-century living room...... 112

Figure 44 . An early twentieth-century kitchen...... 112

Figure 45 . Little City hybrid plans with frequency of occurrence ...... 116

Figure 46 . Early twentieth-century house with vestibule ...... 119

Figure A.l Occupational Distribution of Little City Residents, 1900...... 144

Figure A.2 Occupational Distribution of Little City Residents, 1910...... 145

Figure A.3 Occupational Distribution of Little City Residents. 1920...... 146 INTRODUCTION

Bangor's "Little City" is an eight-block area of former farmland laid out on a grid surrounding an active city park. It is a quiet neighborhood of tree-lined streets, tucked between the hustle and bustle of Center Street on the east, a busy thoroughfare dominated by a private Catholic hospital, and Kenduskeag

Avenue on the west, a major route leading from outlying towns to downtown

Bangor. Little City is filled with two- and two-and-a-half story single-family houses on small lots from the turn of the twentieth century. The area maintains a sense of secluded leisure, imparted by families gathering in the park and children riding their bicycles in the streets. Real estate agents currently instruct home-buyers that the neighborhood is one of the choice locations in Bangor (figure 1).

The growth of Little City is the story of builders' and residents' efforts to shape a middle-class neighborhood in a small American city, a place distinct from the crowded downtown neighborhoods of immigrants and the elegant mansions of the wealthy. The purpose of this study is to explore builders' response to the aspirations of the neighborhood's residents for home and neighborhood around the turn of the twentieth century, and thus to provide insight into urban growth and ideals of family life in small American cities. This examination advances two interrelated arguments. First, it complicates the narrative of suburbanization that has been presented by urban historians, which has relied on the study of metropolitan areas. Bangor inhabitants moved to the periphery of the city in a later period than the denizens of larger cities and the Figure 1. Little City districts they created were not as strictly homogenous by class. Second, it suggests a more complex interpretation of domestic architecture as a reflection of changes in ideal family relationships around the turn of the twentieth century than offered by architectural historians. This study reveals that the builders of

Little City constructed houses that contained both traditional and progressive elements, rather than merely replicating older forms or indiscriminately adopting house plans that were submitted in advice literature.* The creation of this community occurred as the result of a complex relationship between developers, builders and residents.

The dialog between builders and residents produced the urban form and domestic architecture of Little City. The builders articulated a vision for a middle- class subdivision, although the district did not ultimately fulfill their expectations.

Chapter one explores the timing of the development of Little City and details the strategies the builders used to attract the middle class to the neighborhood.

Chapter two describes the residents of the area and demonstrates that unlike larger cities, classes were not strictly segregated one from another in Bangor.

Chapter three depicts the variety of floor plans of houses that builders constructed in the district, revealing the tension between traditional and progressive ideals of domestic architecture and family life. Taken together, the three chapters illustrate the aspirations that builders and residents had for desirable homes in a middle-class neighborhood, and how the process of community-building in a small city differed from larger urban areas and from middle-class ideals presented in prescriptive literature. The builders of Little City developed the neighborhood at the historical moment when the middle class expanded in Bangor. The middle class grew as the city shifted from its reliance on the lumber trade to a more diversified regional service-oriented economy. Bangor had been the foremost lumber port in the world in the mid-nineteenth century, but as the lumber industry moved west and

Maine's economy shifted to pulp and paper manufacturing, Bangor lost its preeminence as a lumber distribution center. Manufacturing enterprises diversified as Bangor businesses reacted to the decline of the lumber industry.

More significantly, the city became the communications, transportation and supply hub for eastern and northern Maine as those areas experienced growth in the potato industry as well as in pulp and paper production in the last quarter of the nineteenth ~entury.~The railroads, banks, and stores that proliferated in

Bangor in the late nineteenth century produced a demand for managers, clerks, professionals, small proprietors, and other white-collar positions. Bangor's middle class grew in response to this more diverse economy.

A generation after the transformation of Bangor's economy, a writer for

The Bangor Daily Commercial recognized that new residential neighborhoods provided visual testimony of the city's continuing productivity. "Bangor has not lost in economic status because some of its industries have changed somewhat in character. . . . There has been one phase of the city's growth that is, next to its production of men, perhaps the clearest test of the city's development along material lines. This is in the expansion of its residential sections and incidental increase in the outward and inner character of the homes thus created.* The writer quotes Abram Kirstein, the president of Kirstein and Sons, a local real estate agency, about the development of "The Little City in Itself' and other neighborhoods that the firm developed.

The growth of the middle class and the subsequent emergence of a middle-class neighborhood in Bangor occurred at a later period and on a smaller scale than the models proposed for suburban development by urban historians.

Kenneth T. Jackson and Sam Bass Warner described a process by which the invention of the streetcar, municipal management of water supply and waste disposal, the spread of a rural domestic ideal, and increased real estate speculation caused suburbanization to accelerate in the late nineteenth century.

However, Bangor did not develop separate middle-class suburbs, and middle- class subdivisions did not evolve until the early twentieth ~entury.~Jackson and

Warner's studies were based on heavily industrialized metropolitan areas in the

United States. By contrast, Bangor was a small city in a rural state, and its urban morphology differed from large cities.

Bangor did not develop class-segregated suburbs common to more urbanized areas; it had neither upscale railroad suburbs for the affluent nor streetcar suburbs for the middle class, because the city was not large enough to accommodate separate class-based suburbs. Nevertheless, Bangor witnessed some stratification according to class; its social geography occurred within the city limits in subdivisions like Little City. Its developers constructed the neighborhood for the middle class, but because of Bangor's small size, Little City was not rigidly segregated by class. Many middle-class residents moved to Little City, but the neighborhood also contained working class residents who had middle-class aspirations. However, the neighborhood attracted more middle- class than working-class residents following 1900, after developers began marketing the area to the middle class. Even subsequent to 1900, however, the neighborhood contained residents from the working class, revealing that the developers' plans for a middle-class enclave were not fully realized. The social and technological forces that divided New York, Boston, and Los Angeles divided

Bangor as well, but at a more modest level.

Moreover, the development of neighborhoods for the middle class occurred at a later period in Bangor than in larger urban areas, owing to the transformation of its economy in the late nineteenth century. While the middle class in large cities used horsecars and omnibuses to create middle-class suburbs in the late 1860s and 1870s, middle-class Bangoreans waited until after the electric streetcar was invented in the late 1880s to move to the city's periphery. Prior to that time, the middle class did not exist in large enough numbers to warrant a separate neighborhood.

Kirstein and the other builders of Little City worked in concert to craft a subdivision for the middle class. A "builder" was any person who made a real estate investment, either through buying and selling land or house^.^ Although

Bangor's building community generally did not have formal working relationships, their separate endeavors complemented one another. Louis Kirstein articulated a vision for the neighborhood and participated in its development to a greater

degree than other speculators, primarily through his marketing endeavors. However, the efforts of the other investors and builders in purchasing land and constructing houses supplemented his development activities and allowed his conception of the neighborhood to reach fruition. Similarly, Kirstein's promotional and development activities defined the neighborhood and helped provide a market for other real estate speculators' investments. The complex interrelationships among the developers, investors and contractors helped create an area that attracted residents from a variety of class backgrounds to the neighborhood.

The efforts of Kirstein and the other investors in the subdivision drew upper middle-class, middle-class, and working-class householders to the area.

Class is a fluid and subjective form of categorization. It is based as much on one's perception of oneself, and on society's perceptions, as it is on quantifiable variables such as occupation or income. However, since Kirstein earnestly marketed the area to the middle class, determining the relative success of his efforts helps to establish the nature of middle-class aspirations, as the home and neighborhood that families moved to was a way to materially identify their class status. The occupations of the heads of household and the family's level of consumption give us one way of assessing class tan ding.^ Although this is a rude approximation, it nonetheless provides a portrait of the types of people who were drawn to Little City over the first two decades of the twentieth centuryg

The class composition (defined by occupation and consumption patterns) of the residents changed after the developers stepped up their real estate endeavors. In 1900, about one-fifth of the neighborhood's residents were upper middle-class, and the remainder were about evenly divided among the middle class and the working class.10Between 1900 and 1910, fewer working class residents moved to the area, while the number of middle-class residents increased and the proportion of upper middle class residents remained the same.

The developers' efforts influenced the class distribution of the neighborhood: they petitioned the city to bring municipal services and the electric streetcar to the area, used deed restrictions specifying minimum construction costs to prohibit families with low incomes from moving to the neighborhood, and promoted the area as a middle class subdivision. Their initial endeavors to encourage the middle class to move to Little City multiplied, as house valuations rose and the area took on the patina of a middle-class enclave over the years.

The builders of Little City constructed houses that they thought would appeal to Bangor's middle class. Shelter magazines of the early twentieth century depicted houses with open floor plans, in stark contrast to the highly segmented floor plans that were popular in the 1870s and 1880s. Scholars have cited the remarkable changes in domestic architecture at the turn of the century as a reflection of changes in family life, noting particularly that the open plan of early twentieth-century reform houses provided more suitable spaces for informal

relationships among family members and between the family and household visitors." However, this case study of the interiors of houses built between 1890

and 1920 in the Liffle City reveals that the builders constructed houses that

combined elements of the open plan with elements of the late nineteenth-century

segmented plan. The builders of these houses offered a range of plans to the middle class, suggesting their understanding that some families would want to incorporate a new ideal of middle-class living into their homes, but that others might want to preserve aspects of Victorian formality.

The evolution of part of the John Smart farm around the turn of twentieth century into "The Little City in ItselP provides insight into the aspirations of

America's small-town middle class for detached single-family houses in homogenous, picturesque neighborhoods with convenient transportation and modern amenities such as water, sewer and electrical power. The complex

relationship between the builders of Little City and the residents who moved there produced the first middle-class subdivision in the city. By examining how the developers, investors and builders tapped into middle-class desires for home and neighborhood in Bangor, this study sheds light on middle-class

suburbanization and domestic life in small cities around the turn of the twentieth

century. It also tells the story of how ordinary people both responded to and

shaped a new way of life.

' Sam Bass Warner, Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870-1900, 2"d ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 1-3, 53-59; Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 107-137. Gwendolyn Wright, Moralism and the Model Home: Domestic Architecture and Cultural Conflict in Chicago, 18737913 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 33-34,244-246; Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in the United States (Cambridge: MIT Press), 96-1 13, 158-176; Clifford Clark, The American Family Home, 1800-1 960 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press), 72-192. Richard W. Judd, "The Lumber Industry in an Age of Change" in Maine: The Pine Tree State from Prehistory to the Present, Richard W. Judd, Edwin A. Churchill, Joel W. Eastman, eds. (Orono, ME: University of Maine Press, 1995), 410414; Judd, 'The Pulp and Paper Industry, 18651930," in Maine, 426431; James B. Vickery, Made in Bangor Economic Emergence and Adaptation, 1834-1 91 1 (Bangor, ME: Bangor Historical Society, l984), 57, 14-18. Aroostook County in northern Maine began shipping potatoes to southem New England after the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad connected that region to Bangor in 1891. Joel W. Eastman, 'Transportation Systems in Maine, 1820-80" in Maine, 319. 4 "Bangot's Early Growth Through Its Lumber Industry and Energy of Citizens," Bangor Daily Commercial Bangor Centennial Scrapbook, Bangor Public Library, 70-73. I differentiate between "suburbs" and 'subdivisions," because 'suburb" connotes a separate town (that may have eventually been annexed by the city). 'Subdivisions" in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries were parcels of land that real estate operatives purchased. The real estate developers then graded the area into streets and lots, provided it with municipal services, and sold lots. The process varied widely among localities. Jackson and Warner refer to the subdivision within the streetcar suburb. I refer to LieCity as a subdivision because it is not a suburb: it is not outside the city limits, and it closer to the downtown that the 3 to 10 mile radius Warner sets as the geographical limits of streetcar suburbs. It is also not large enough to constitute a separate corporate entity. Kirstein refers to Little City as a 'subdivision" in real estate ads. Jackson, 135-136; Warner, 2, 121-122. Jackson, 107-112. Warner also discusses this phenomenon, 20-29. Thomas Hanchett and Alexander von Hoffman have refined Jackson and Warner's model of suburban development. Hanchett used Charlotte, North Cardina as a case study of the morphology in southern cities and von Hoffman revisited Jamaica Plain, one of the suburbs Warner studied; he refined Warner's findings to include a more complex reading of the community. Thomas W. Hanchett, Sorting Out the New South City Race, Class and Urban Development in Charlotte, 18751975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 5465; Alexander von Hoffman, Local Attachments: The Making of an American Urban Neighborhood, 1850 to 1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994),23-63. ' Warner uses this definition also. Warner, 37. 1 examined the valuation of the house and household possessions, and whether or not they employed servants to gauge the household's level of consumption. I explain this in further detail in Chapter 2. 1 used the classification system devised by Olivier Zunz in The Changing Face of Inequality: Urbanization, Industrial Development, and Immigrants in Detroit, 1880- 1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 420-433. 1 discuss that classification system in more detail in Chapter 2. lo In 1900, twenty percent of the Little City population was from the upper middle class, forty-two percent were from the middle class, thirty-two percent were skilled workers, and six percent were unskilled workers. l1 Clark, 131-192; Although Gwendolyn Wright does not address families per se, she does discuss changes in gender roles and their relationship to house plans. Wright, Moralism, 105-149; Wright, Building the Dream, 171-173. See also Margaret Marsh, Suburban Lives, 67-89; Candace Volz, 'The Modern Look of the Early Twentieth-Century House: A Mirror of Changing Lifestyles," in American Home Life, 1880-1930, ed. Jessica H. Foy and Thomas J. Schlereth (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992), 25-48; Cheryl Robertson, 'House and Home in the Arts and Crafts Era: Reforms of Simpler Living," in 'The Art That is Life": The Arts and Crafts Movement in America, 18751920, ed. Wendy Kaplan (Boston: Lie, Brown 8 Co., l987), 336- 357; Cheryl Robertson, 'Male and Female Agendas for Domestk Reform: The Middle-class Bungalow in Gendered Perspective," Winterthur Portfolio 26, nos. 213 (SummerIAutumn, 1991): 123-141. Chapter 1

"This Popular Neighborhood": The Building of "The Little City in Itself'

Returning from church to his Kenduskeag Avenue home in October, 1866,

John Godfrey, a probate judge, traveled along Bangor's Montgomery Street. In his journal, he recorded his observations of the area which would ultimately become the "Little Cityn neighborhood:

Montgomery Street is through the Carr property, runs from Kenduskeag Avenue, near our lot, to Center Street along the height of land, Mr. Battles [sic] house being on the right as you go eastward. . . . There are now no houses upon the street. . . . Jones P. Veazie has bought two lots directly east of Mr. Battles, where he intends to build another year. It is a fine location. As I came over it today, I could not help stopping, as I almost always do, to look over the landscape. It is one of the most enchanting spots in this region. Southward you have the body of the city, and some eight miles to the South and East lie the Holden hills. These hills are bathed in a blue, dreamy mist-a dozen church spires and steeples are between you and them. . . . Stillness prevails. Why have not the wealthy and aspiring [seized] upon this beautiful locality for residences? It is too soon, I suppose, for the suddenly rich men to have taste equal to their means. But the time is coming when fine establishments will grace both sides of this street, and this part of the city will have name and fame.'

Although this part of the city ultimately acquired a name: 'The Little City in Itself," it became an area distinctly more bourgeois than Godfrey envisioned. The mansions of wealthy Bangor residents, Amory Battles, Jones P. Veazie, and

Captain Simon Nowell, were to be the only 'fine establishmentsnin the district that would become Bangor's 'Little City." Some thirty years after Godfrey made his prediction, the area grew, instead, into a neighborhood of clerks, shopkeepers, mill workers, carpenters, doctors, and lawyers. The middle-class citizens who settled in Little City did not choose the neighborhood merely for the view that Godfrey extolled. Instead, they were drawn to the area by the efforts of the builders, developers and real estate speculators who constructed an environment that responded to the aspirations of

Bangor's middle class. In 1903 Louis Kirstein, developer and real estate speculator, named the eight block area bounded by Center, Fountain, Poplar and

Montgomery Streets 'The Little City in Itselr as part of his plan to develop and promote the district (figure 2). Kirstein and other entrepreneurs were attracted to residential development as a potentially lucrative investment. The parcels of land they bought, the size of the house lots they had surveyed, the parks they developed, the building restrictions they imposed on homeowners, and the language they used to promote the area all demonstrate their understanding of the middle class ideal of home and neighborhood. Bangor's increasingly stratified economy had produced more members of the home-buying middle class in the first decade of the twentieth century than in the late nineteenth century, and the developers of Little City tried to anticipate their desires.*

Louis Kirstein most clearly articulated a vision of the subdivision as a middle-class neighborhood, but there were a number of developers and investors who participated in the growth of Little City, and their level of involvement varied.

Kirstein and his real estate agency, however, were involved in every phase of the district's evolution from farmland to subdivision. He had the capital and the connections to guide the project from its inception to its fruition. His real estate agency bought tracts of land and surveyed them into streets and house lots; he - - MAP --

BANGORAND BREWER --*.ID .I - CANNON& CO..

BUM* YC. --.-

Figure 2. Street map from 1899 Directory of Bangor and Brewer. Little City is circled. urged municipalities and private companies to extend urban services and streetcar lines to the area; he encouraged others to invest in the area, and he actively marketed the subdivision. Kirstein and Sons participated in a number of different real estate activities all over the state of Maine, so Kirstein had learned to be an astute salesman.

Other developers worked on a more modest scale: they built a few houses on speculation and offered mortgages to homeowners, while some real estate investors merely bought and sold tracts of land. Although this last group may have had the land surveyed into streets and house lots, they generally did not get involved in bringing municipal services to the area, and they engaged in minimal marketing activities to attract consumers. Another type of real estate investor bought individual lots and arranged for a contractor to build a house, which they would then quickly sell to home owners. Many of these investors were contractors or carpenters, who participated in housing speculation on a small scale, as they usually did not have a lot of capital to tie up in long-term investment^.^

This surge of real estate development in what became "Little City" did not occur until the end of the nineteenth century. When Judge Godfrey wrote so glowingly of the area in 1866, however, he had good reason to believe that wealthy Bangoreans would build residences there. Bangor had been the lumber capital of the world from the 1830s to the 1860s. Located at the head of tide on the Penobscot River, Bangor's prosperity derived from the rich timberlands of

northern and western Maine, floated as logs down the Penobscot, sawn in Old Town, Stillwater, Great Works and other mill villages along the river, and shipped to port cities on the East Coast, the West Indies, and England. In addition to getting rich from logging and shipping in its harbor, Bangor's merchants provided supplies to the lumber camps (figures 3 and 4).4 Through the nineteenth century,

Bangor's citizens, many of them wealthy timberland owners, expected their city to continue its expansion. In 1869, Oliver Frost, a Bangor businessman, wrote,

"The time may soon arrive when the three great cities of North America-Bangor,

New York, and San Francisco-shall be representatives of the wealth, population, intelligence, and enterprise of the eastern, central and western divisions of our countt-yy5 Although Frost's comment was the boast of a Bangor promoter, his sentiment testified to the high expectations that Bangor's citizens held for the future of their city.

Frost and Godfrey did not anticipate the rapid changes taking place in

Bangor's economy at mid-century. The lumber trade was moving west as lumbermen depleted pine stocks in Maine and as railroad and canal networks made the Great Lakes and the Pacific Northwest regions accessible. Bangor continued to thrive on logging through the end of the century by shipping spruce planks to New York wholesalers, but the "queen city of the eastn lost its primacy as the premier lumber port of the world by the early 1860s. In addition, Maine's timber trade shifted from lumber to pulp and paper, and the industry's focus moved from Bangor to mill villages closer to timber stocks. Despite the decline of the lumber trade, however, Bangor's economy gained strength from the city's Figure 3. 1837 Engraving of Bangor. Courtesy of the Bangor Historical Society.

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TETO~-~WHITE, -I1 omma FOB ULE i A lqe IcocL of LUMBBBYEh'O 000D8. me?Ae*.n i Lumbermen's Blanketing, i ~~h~.orlu.bh.nd~4 TlfflLLEB PLAINUS. amd d,Wwl 1rUI:e Blme ~triged-Frockhi, 1 dornErcn Hev SHIBTS. DRAWERS. DUCK OrERhLIS WOOLBOCKS FR~CES UI~ YI-I,

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: Em aide Kmdvskcy Bddtc, Barn or. .. : 6qt.S). I&. 8.5, ;

Figure 4. Advertisement for Thomas A. White, lumber supply merchant, from 1856 Democrat. Courtesy of the Bangor Historical Society. position as the commercial and mercantile center for northern and eastern

~aine.~

Transportation networks emerged in the last quarter of the nineteenth century that contributed to Bangor's standing as northern Maine's economic center. In 1891, entrepreneurs established the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad to transport potatoes, lumber, and pulp and paper products from Aroostook County in the north to the rest of New England. Also, the Maine Central Railroad consolidated several smaller lines after the Civil War and by the 1870s, MCRR controlled most of the railway lines in southern Maine. Bangor became a major terminal for the line, which conveyed products from northern and eastern ~aine.~

As a writer for The Industrial Journal in 1910 noted, "For every tree that is fallen in Eastern Maine, for every bushel of potatoes that is raised in Aroostook county, for every new family that moves into this northern and eastern country, Bangor receives directly or indirectly its share of prosperity as a centre [sic] of banking, supplies and education.'"As the city's economy diversified, its middle class grew to supply the workforce for this new service ec~nomy.~

Residential real estate development in Bangor reflected the city's economic vitality. Despite Bangor's prosperity in the mid-nineteenth century, it was not until the turn of the twentieth century that real estate entrepreneurs began to develop neighborhoods for the middle-class. Bangor's many Greek

Revival, Gothic Revival, ltalianate and Second Empire mansions furnish concrete examples of the wealth accumulated by lumber barons during the city's heyday

(figure 5). The city's laboring classes lived in crowded conditions near the Figure 5. Examples of Bangor's mid-nineteenth century mansions. Courtesy of the Bangor Historical Society.

Figure 6. The Irish quarter near Hancock and York Streets in Bangor, c. 1895. Courtesy of the Bangor Historical Society. Penobscot River and Kenduskeag Stream (figures 6 and 7).1° Small proprietors, clerks and other members of the middle class lived near downtown for most of the nineteenth century (figure 8).

By the end of the nineteenth century, as Bangor's economy became more complex, social and economic forces led to a geographical separation of classes in the city. Social and cultural historians point to suburbanization as one of the hallmarks of American middle-class formation in the late nineteenth century.

Stuart Blumin writes that "by the end of the century the attractive detached suburban house, set within a homogenous neighborhood of commuting businessmen, professionals, officials, and senior clerical workers, had become one of the principal molders of middle-class life, and one of its most powerful symbols."" Urban historians Kenneth Jackson and Sam Bass Warner have described how the newly-formed middle class hoped to escape congestion, filth and disease of the city center for the rural ideal of the suburbs. New transportation technology and the provision of municipal services allowed them to move to the city's periphery.'2 In Bangor, dust from lumber mills, smoke from foundries, odors from tanneries, and waves of cholera epidemics began driving

Bangor's middle and upper class residents from downtown after mid-century

(figure 9).13 Unlike other American cities where suburbanization flourished in the

1870s, however, Bangor's middle class did not congregate in a separate neighborhood until the 1890s, because Bangor was not economically large or diverse enough to support a thriving middle class until that time.14 Moreover, although Bangor developed neighborhoods that attracted a preponderance of Figure 7. Concentration of the Irish population in mid-nineteenth century Bangor. Courtesy of James Mundy. Figure 8. 1875 Atlas of Penobscot County map of Bangor and Veazie. The black squares represent houses. Most of the population lived in the downtown area. Figure 9. Downtown Bangor in 1897. View of the Kenduskeag Stream and the Franklin Street bridge. Courtesy of the Bangor Historical Society. middle-class residents, these districts also contained upper-middle class and working class families.

Little City was the first successful middle-class neighborhood in Bangor, yet it developed later than the streetcar suburbs described by Jackson and

Warner. These historians demonstrate that members of the middle class began moving to the periphery of major American cities in the 1860s, after horsecar routes were established and urban services, such as water and sewer lines, were extended beyond the city's core.15 While the horse-drawn streetcar was transforming New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and other large cities by

1860, Bangor never installed horsecar lines.16 The city's steep hills may have discouraged the investment in horsecar routes, but it is more likely that the low population density of Bangor made horsecars unnecessary.

Despite the lack of horse-drawn streetcars, real estate investors took an interest in the location that Godfrey described in the mid-nineteenth century. Joseph

Carr, a prominent Bangor lawyer, developed the former "Smart Farm," a region south of Little City, in the 1850s (figure 10). The house lots he surveyed were primarily between Division, Jefferson and Clinton (now Congress) Streets. Carr apparently felt that the district north of Clinton was too distant from the city center to be inhabited, probably because Bangor's population was not large enough to warrant developing land that far from the center of town. The 1875 Atlas of

Penobscot County reveals that twenty years after Carr had his property surveyed, the area north of Montgomery Street was still undeveloped (figure Figure 10. Joseph Carr's lot plan for the former "Smart Farmn 1l).I7 Bangor's small middle class precluded any significant growth in the area

until later in the century.

Some investors, nevertheless, evidently believed that people were ready to move to the area. Isaac Clark bought eight acres north of Montgomery in

1867, and sold it two years later to Samuel Blake for a $2500 profit. Five years

later, Blake sold the land to Melville Weston, an investor from Boston, who had

part of the eight-acre parcel surveyed into fifty-seven house lots and two streets,

Norfolk and Bellevue (figure 12). However, nobody built on these lots until after

Matthew Lincoln bought the parcel from Weston in 1891.I8

By 1893, the extension of the electric streetcar accelerated the movement

of residents to the area that would become Little City. While a handful of families

moved to Montgomery Street in the 1870s, they would travel to their places of

work without the benefit of interurban transportation. They probably did not find

this situation arduous, as Montgomery Street is only one mile from downtown. In

1875, the settled section of Bangor (including Brewer, its neighbor across the

Penobscot River), was only one and a half miles in diameter, allowing for easy

movement on foot or by horse and carriage (see figure 1I).'' The installation of

the electric street railway allowed the city to expand, as it increased the area that

people could travel quickly about the city. Bangor adopted this form of urban

transportation soon after its invention. The Bangor Street Railway was chartered

in 1887, the same year that Frank Julian Sprague demonstrated in Richmond,

Virginia that the electric streetcar system was a viable form of city-wide Figure 11. 1875 Atlas of Penobscot County map of Bangor and Brewer. Note the lack of development north of Montgomery Street. Figure 12. Weston's lot plan for Bellevue and Norfolk Streets transportation. Six years later, the streetcar line was extended to Congress and

Center Streets, one block south of the future development of Little

Kenneth Jackson describes the extension of the streetcar lines as an important part of middle-class suburban development at the turn of the twentieth century that also included the involvement of real estate specialists; the provision of municipal services such as roads, sewers, and electricity; the improvement of construction technology; the changing structure of financing residential construction; and the proliferation of pattern books and new magazines devoted to shelter, such as Good Housekeeping, The American Home, and The Ladies'

Home Journal. 2' However, Jackson stresses that real estate developers were key to suburban growth.

Whether their subdivisions were large or small, real estate specialists were more active in the city building process than anyone else. The theory that early suburbs just grew, with owners 'turning cowpaths and natural avenues of traffic into streets,' is erroneous. Subdividers lobbied with municipal governments to extend city services, they pressured streetcar companies to send tracks into developing sections, and they set property lines for the individual homes. Each city and most suburbs were created from many small real-estate developments that reflected changing market conditions and local pecu~iarities.~~

Jackson acknowledges the variation in suburban development, but he provides models for understanding different types of real estate developers.

Jackson delineates two types of real estate operatives: wealthy men who formed syndicates to own streetcar as well as real estate companies for developing large tracts of land outside of major cities, and real estate specialists who operated on a smaller scale, buying parcels of land that they had divided into streets and house lots, and then sold to housing speculators or individua~s.~~

In his study of streetcars and suburbanization in Boston, Sam Warner found that while real estate specialists speculated in small parcels of land, most houses were built by small contractors and individuals. "The main task of the speculator was to cut up the land into house lots, begin construction of streets, and find purchasers for the land. Only rarely did the speculators of this era follow the modern practice of purchasing land, setting out streets, and building houses in order to sell a finished land-house unit to the ultimate consumer."24In Bangor, a wide range of people fitting both Jackson's and Warner's descriptions--real estate specialists, land and housing speculators, contractors--were involved in the building of Little City.

In Little City, Louis Kirstein was one of a number of groups of individuals involved in purchasing land, setting streets and surveying house lots. They were probably drawn to this site as investment property because of its location on a hill overlooking the city, which they viewed as an attractive site for a middle-class neighborhood. It was, as Godfrey discussed in his journal, a "beautiful locality."

Kirstein, who had immigrated in his mid-twenties from Germany in the 1870s, first operated a general store in Houlton, then moved to Bangor in 1888 and opened a men's clothing store on Exchange Street. In 1894 he started an insurance and real estate business. Three years later, he bought an eleven and a half acre parcel of land from Morse and Company, a large mill complex that operated on the banks of the nearby Kenduskeag This tract of land consisted of approximately one-third of the area that would become Little City, and Kirstein appeared to have a vision of it as a neighborhood from the time he bought the property. Kirstein had two partners in this land deal: Bangor businessman and retailer Julius Waterman, and George

Hamlin, a professor of mathematics and civil engineering the University of Maine at Orono. Kirstein probably involved Hamlin in the investment to ensure that the survey work was skillfully executed, whereas Kirstein and Waterman had close personal and professional ties. They were both German Jews and had owned clothing stores on Exchange Street; Kirstein's daughter Annette would eventually marry Waterman's son Adolph. In the spring of 1898, Hamlin surveyed the newly- purchased land, plus three smaller adjoining parcels of land that Kirstein had bought at about the same time, into five streets and eighty-five house lots. A few months later four of the streets were laid out and graded by the City of Bangor, and the following year, in 1899, the City extended sewer lines up Center Street.

The fifth street, Fountain Street, was laid out and graded by the city in 1907

(figure 13).%

Other real estate speculators and builders supplemented Kirstein's efforts to create a middle-class neighborhood, although they were not working in partnership with him. In contrast to the focused manner in which Kirstein platted his land, Matthew Lincoln, who bought another substantial portion of the area that would become Little City, developed his section of the neighborhood in a piecemeal fashion. Lincoln's failure to plan adequately for the subdivision of his land reveals that his interest in the area was purely pecuniary, and that he did not Figure 13. Kirstein's,Waterman's, and Hamlin's lot plan

-. have a strong concept of the district as a neighborhood. Lincoln was a lumber dealer with offices on Exchange Street in Bangor, and he speculated in real estate in Bangor and surrounding small towns. He bought four small pieces of property just north of Montgomery Street in the early 1880s which totaled approximately seventeen acres, and consisted of most of the remainder of the land that would become Little City. In 1891, Lincoln had his tract of land surveyed into four streets and 129 house lots, but he did not register his plan with the

Penobscot County Registry of Deeds until 1897. Lincoln sold nineteen lots before he registered his plan with the county (figure 14)~~'

Lincoln's haphazard approach to subdivision development created problems for the people who bought lots from him. Lincoln sold nine houses on

Grant and Leighton Streets before those streets were laid out and graded by the city and the subsequent streets laid out by the city did not conform to Lincoln's survey. Typically, a subdivider in Bangor would have his plot of land surveyed into streets and house lots, then petition the Board of Street Engineers to accept the streets as part of the city's road network. If the locations were acceptable to the city engineers, the city would then lay out and grade the streets. While

Kirstein petitioned the city to have the streets in his part of Little City all laid out and graded at the same time, Lincoln must have petitioned for each of his streets individually, because they were laid out separately over a period of seven years.

The public was invited to comment on the proposed streets and, on two occasions, men who had bought lots from Lincoln objected to the city engineer's plan because it "did not conform to the street dedicated by plan of Matthew 4' MONl'B(rMBRY nr~ss~ . L - i. r ,.L.\Ii 0, +,ltl Y 2% += ,:.vx. 4 UA.DOWIS& BY K4 TTIIJW LU-VOIX -- . , , , , ., b,.*,.. ... ,.-. A':'. .. 8 .- -... ii.l : . - \dNy -rrL. bs .y 8- UP.&Ibsr C.rm8cd Idd.Yu8~mm~C~. - .. . Lh..\. r*,.a**.\ LI).L. umm. IC. mu.... *.U,.....OCI *I. ** ~OI, u .. rri. .... 0U.I Y(L ( rbcc I; Figure 14. Matthew Lincoln's lot plan ~incoln."~~In one instance, the city engineers replied that they could not lay out the street in accordance with Lincoln's plan because "said plan does not agree in shape or dimensions with the land as it exists on the face of the Earth." Unlike

Kirstein, Lincoln failed to obtain the services of a competent surveyor as well as plan for the orderly sale of lots on his tract of land on Montgomery Street.

Lincoln's and Kirstein's real estate activities in the tract of land north of

Montgomery Street were complementary in the development of Little City.

Lincoln bought his parcel of land and filed his survey plan of streets and lots with the Registry of Deeds shortly before Kirstein and his partners bought their tract of land from Morse and Company. Also, the city laid out Leighton Street on

Lincoln's tract of land barely a month after Kirstein bought his plot. Lincoln,

Kirstein, and Waterman had all worked on Exchange Street, so they were probably aware of one another's business ventures. Lincoln and Kirstein seem to have responded to one another's property dealings in the area.

The interaction between Kirstein and Lincoln is most evident in the creation of the Little City park. In 1913, Lincoln's heirs sold fourteen house lots- about 'an acre and a quarter of land-to the City of Bangor for $5,250 for the area that would become the park. In 1924, an article in the Bangor Daily News reported that "at the start of development the Kirstein firm presented to the city a generous area of the best lots for a public park, which were accepted and will always be open spaces and a part of Bangor's park system.^" While the Kirstein agency took credit for an act of generosity that it did not commit, the agency was involved in the sale of the park to the city. One of Kirstein's sons, Bernard, was present at the transfer of the deed for the park, indicating that Kirstein and Sons encouraged, and may have even initiated, this transaction. One of Kirstein's other developments, Fairmount, had a city park in the center of it since its inception. Kirstein doubtless saw the positive effect the park would have on real estate development. The park provided a picturesque anchor for the neighborhood and became an attraction for potential resident^.^'

In addition to petitioning the city to lay out and grade streets, Kirstein apparently used his business contacts to pressure the street railway company to extend tracks through the Little City neighborhood, further indicating that he tried to cater to the needs of the middle class. The streetcar attracted the middle class to the neighborhood, as it eased their path to work in clerical and professional positions in the central business In 1902, John Graham of Quincy,

Massachusetts became the general manager and treasurer of the Public Works

Company, which included the Bangor Street Railway as well as various electric and water companies. Graham had rescued the Quincy and Boston Street

Railway from bankruptcy, and the Public Works Company stockholders asked him to take over the corporation, which had been suffering financial difficulties.

Graham reorganized the holdings of the company into the Bangor Railway and

Electric Company and began operating the venture at a profit (figure 15).~~

Louis Kirstein and John Graham had been business associates. Graham commissioned Kirstein to manage the construction of the Graham Building on

Central Street in downtown Bangor in 1906. When that structure burned in

Bangor's 1911 fire, he again asked Kirstein to oversee the construction of the <.: .-

Figure 15. Bangor streetcar. Courtesy of the Bangor Historical Society. second Graham building at the corner of Harlow and Central Streets. Kirstein and

Graham had also been vocal opponents of the city's property assessment increase following the fire. It is likely that Kirstein persuaded Graham to extend the Center Street trolley line to the corner of Poplar and Center Streets in 1902, and then to loop the line through Little City and back downtown two years later as a way to increase fares for the streetcar company. Looping the streetcar line through Little City would have benefited Kirstein and Graham's companies. The accessibility of the streetcar line increased the value of Kirstein's land. The fifty to sixty foot standard street frontage of Little City house lots seemed to ensure that a high volume of people would use the streetcar, thus guaranteeing that the line would be profitable (figure 16).

Kirstein's real estate activities suggest that he was interested in developing a middle-class neighborhood, but his vision for Little City is clearly articulated in his promotional material for the neighborhood. A newspaper advertisement from 1903 reads:

The Little City in Itself. No house lot story is complete without reference to this, the most-rapidly growing section of Bangor. Includes lots on Center, Linden, Poplar, Grant, Norfolk, Leighton and Fountain Streets. Have water and sewer; are practically on car line; are in a section well built up with desirable homes occupied by their owners. There's been a good deal of building done here-of the right kind of houses by the right kind of people. We invite you to join this popular neighborhood. S ecial terms to the right parties- we'll help you to own your home.8

In this notice, Kirstein mentioned several aspects of the area that would have appealed to the middle class. First, he defined the neighborhood both by its picturesque name-"The Liffle City in Itself"-and by delineating a specific Figure 16. Bangor Street Railway map geographic location, lending the district an air of exclusivity. He touted the amenities that the middle class would have been most interested in, and would have been more likely to have been able to pay for than the working class: it had water and sewer lines and was close to the trolley route--features that would have raised the price of a house beyond the means of the working class.

Kirstein suggested the exclusive nature of the neighborhood when he characterized the area as containing "the right kind of houses by the right kind of people." He alluded to the fact that his real estate firm provided financing for homes, which would entice people with stable and relatively high incomes. His indication that the amount of credit his firm was willing to extend varied according to who was buying may have presented another attraction for middle class home- buyers. Kirstein was more straightfotward about mortgaging houses to a certain class of people in another advertisement: "We are always ready to offer reasonable terms for the payment for these lots and to the right parties we will extend further assistance in advancing money to build their homes, to be re-paid on satisfactory installments." In contemporaneous advertisements for Little City,

Kirstein discussed the high elevation and fine views, providing further incentive for the home-buying public that could afford to pay for a desirable location.36

Matthew Lincoln used a distinctly different approach to marketing his house lots than Kirstein's carefully constructed concept of a neighborhood.

Lincoln placed a five-line classified advertisement in the Bangor Daily

Commercial stating that he had house lots for sale on several streets in Bangor, including Fountain, Leighton, Norfolk, Grant and Montgomery streets." Lincoln's announcement did not distinguish between the house lots on those streets and the others he was selling, nor did he describe the municipal services available in the area or any other attractions in that location. Further, he did not make any attempt to describe the lots on those streets as a neighborhood or subdivision.

Although Lincoln did not advance his property as a middle-class enclave, his real estate activities furthered Kirstein's promotion of the area. Lincoln benefited from Kirstein's marketing techniques, and Kirstein profited from

Lincoln's land speculation. Kirstein described Little City as between Center and

Fountain Streets and south of Poplar Street, but he did not prescribe the southern boundary. Therefore, the area he depicted would have included

Lincoln's area as well lots closer to downtown. In fact, when Little City was characterized in later writings by the Kirstein firm, they stated that the southern boundary was Montgomery Street, which included Lincoln's lots. Even though

Lincoln did not explicitly advance his lots as a middle-class subdivision, Kirstein appropriated them as part of his promotional campaign.

Like Kirstein, Matthew Lincoln also mortgaged house lots and, like many subdividers of this era, Lincoln offered short-term, low interest loans, with semi- annual payments of one to three years in duration. However, Lincoln differed from Kirstein because he offered only a handful of mortgages with leftover capital, whereas Kirstein financed both house lots and housing construction as part of his business. Lincoln was probably selective about those people for whom he decided to finance lots, but he did not use mortgages as a way to screen potential residents of the neighborhood as Kirstein had done.38 Kirstein influenced the appearance of the neighborhood by building some houses on speculation to advance his ideal of middle-class housing. Kirstein built eight houses in the Little City neighborhood between 1899 and 1911 (figure 17).

Many houses in the neighborhood were similar to the ones that Kirstein built.

Three of the houses he constructed, all built in 1901 on Center Street, were identical. Kirstein lived with his family in three different houses between 1900 and

1920, in an effort to demonstrate that the neighborhood was a desirable place to live-a common practice among subdivider^.^'

Kirstein also used restrictive covenants to ensure that the neighborhood and the houses it contained conformed to his vision. The covenants in the deeds show that Kirstein wanted the neighborhood to be residential rather than commercial or industrial, as the deeds specified that only domiciles could be constructed. They also reveal that Kirstein wanted the houses to be of high quality. He stipulated that new houses needed to cost at least eighteen hundred dollars to build.40

Louis Kirstein had an idea of what he thought the Little City neighborhood should be, yet other builders also contributed to the growth of the neighborhood.

Housing speculators bought a number of lots, built houses on them and sold them for a profit. William Hallett, who worked his way up from telegrapher to general manager at the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad, was one housing investor. He moved to Center Street in Little City in 1899, while a clerk with the railroad. Shortly after being promoted to assistant superintendent, he moved to another house on Center Street in 1907. That same year, he bought a small Figure 17. Louis Kirstein's speculative houses parcel of land on Grant Street from Kirstein behind his own house and had the lot lines redrawn into larger plots. In addition, he built three houses on speculation near his home. Over the next two years, he built five houses on speculation on the Grant Street parcel, and sold the remaining lots. In 1912, he built two additional houses on speculation on Norfolk Street (figure

Although Hallett was more active than other house speculators in Little

City, his real estate activities illustrate behavior typical of the small investor. He put up a few houses on speculation on land near his own house over a relatively short period of time. Although they did not articulate a vision of the neighborhood as Kirstein had, these small investors' activities supported Kirstein's conceptions.

Because they lived in the area where they speculated, they tried to keep up the neighborhood standards. They consulted plan books, house catalogs and popular magazines when deciding what type of houses to build. Mostly, they wanted to build houses that would appeal to the middle-class home buyers who were seeking houses in that neighborhood. Warner writes that these home builders looked to houses that were already constructed to decide what to build.

"The typical builder used his knowledge as a local resident for the selection of his property. He built on land near his own house. . . .Because the suburban builder was an amateur he was a willing follower of popular housing fashions. . . .The new houses in his vicinity were probably the most instructive and influential models.n42In fact, the plan of Hallett's first house is the same as a number of the houses Kirstein had constructed (figure 19).~~ Figure 18. William Hallett's speculative houses Figure 19. William Hallett's first house Soon after Kirstein began developing Little City, proposals for other

Bangor residential subdivisions appeared in the real estate pages of the Bangor newspapers. With the exception of Fairmount, another development that Kirstein promoted to Bangor's middle class, none of these subdivisions achieved the permanence and homogeneity of Liffle City. Thomas Manners placed a half-page ad in the Bangor Daily Commercial for a lot sale for "Hyde Parkn on Union Street.

The ad pictured throngs of people on their way to the lot sale--even the trolley car in the distance had a banner on it which read "the Great Lot Sale." As in the

Little City advertisement, the notice for the Hyde Park lot sale was aimed at the middle class. Manners proclaimed the advantages of homeownership ("own your own home, stop paying rent, avoid the landlord, and be your own boss") as well as a new type of payment plan that had been advertised in the Ladies' Home

Journal, which involved a down payment of ten dollars, then one dollar per week

(figure 20).

Manners discussed the urban services that would be available in the subdivision and the restrictions that would ensure a middle-class neighborhood.

"Hyde Park is as handsome a piece of land as there is in the City of Bangor. . . .It lies high and dry, and is beautifully graded, insuring perfect drainage. Electric light, city water, trolley car service and better than all it is within a few minutes' walk from the center of the city. . . .These lots will be sold carefully to good people, under restrictions, insuring good neighbors and preventing the building of shacks and ~hanties."~~In spite of the splashy ad and the appeals to the middle class, Hyde Park never enjoyed the success of Liffle City. Thomas Manners was Figure 20. Hyde Park advertisement the agent for a large real estate company that covered New England. His agency sold house lots, but did not invest the time and effort to create a residential neighborhood. Thus, Hyde Park lacked the qualities that helped define Little City as a neighborhood, such as the city park and the tree-lined streets. 45

Pearl and Dennett, another real estate firm in Bangor, also hoped to develop a middle-class subdivision. They surveyed Maple Street between

Garland Street and Mount Hope Avenue into house lots and called the area

"Homeland." While it attracted the middle class to the area, it never evolved into a distinct neighborhood. Much smaller than either Fairmount or Little City,

Homeland covered only two blocks. Maple Street was quite broad in this section,

but the area did not feature a city park. Aside from giving it a picturesque name

and locating it on a boulevard, Pearl and Dennett did not actively promote the

area as the Kirstein firm had advanced Little City.

Kirstein himself marketed "Hillside," a development near Broadway and

Center Streets, not far from Little City, but his goal for this section was solely to

attract small investors. Instead of dividing the area into house lots, he partitioned

it into one-acre lots, and promoted it to real estate entrepreneurs and people wishing to preserve a rural lifestyle. "Each acre lot is suitable for sub-division into

from 6 to 8 house lots, giving purchasers the opportunity to sell off house lots any

time desired without trouble or expense, as the streets have all been laid out and

built by us. We want to reach two classes: folks desiring large building sites with

plenty of room for garden, stable, henneries, etc., and folks looking for profitable

investment.* This notice appeared on the same page as the ad for Little City, which demonstrates that Kirstein promoted tracts of land for different purposes.

Kirstein sold real estate to a variety of people--everything from individual house lots to timberlands-so he had learned to be a shrewd marketer.

A decade after Kirstein began promoting Little City, his firm bought the

Hadlock Farm, a larger tract of land on the other side of the city that he renamed

"Fairmount." This fifty-seven acre parcel had already been surveyed into streets, a city park, and house lots. Shortly after Kirstein and Sons acquired Hadlock

Farm, Kirstein established another real estate company in addition to Kirstein and Sons called "Fairmount Realty Association," and relotted the plan into smaller house lots (figure 21)~~As with Little City, the Fairmount Realty

Association promoted the subdivision to the middle class. The agency was candid about using deed restrictions to control the character of the neighborhood.

In a 1934 retrospective newspaper feature, Kirstein's son Abram wrote about the area, "Fairmount lots also carried restrictions as to the type of buildings and nearness to the street and business establishments were prohibited, thereby assuring the lot purchasers of a lasting residential atmosphere? The streetcar line extended past the border of the neighborhood, but unlike Little City, it did not go through the subdivision. There was a large lot sale when Kirstein first began developing the neighborhood, with people crowding into the area in their carriages to buy a lot (figure 22).

Kirstein and Sons excelled at marketing Little City, and later Fairmount, as middle-class neighborhoods. The firm accomplished this through selecting desirable locations, providing urban services to recruit the expanding middle Figure 21. Fairmount lot plan Figure 22. Fairmount lot sale class of Bangor to the subdivisions, taking advantage of the real estate activities of other investors, and using deed restrictions to exclude those who could not afford to build a sufficiently expensive house. Above all, the Kirstein firm promoted the district as a middle-class community, first through advertisements, and then in articles in newspapers and trade journals, presenting Little City as 'a restricted section where all the homes and the grounds are kept in attractive condition." 49 The Kirstein agency had a consistent idea of the kind of subdivision it wanted to build, and they used newspapers as one venue to present that concept.

The builders and investors in Little City did not record any notions that they may have had about the neighborhood, but their actions maintained

Kirstein's vision. The land speculators allowed Kirstein to appropriate their holdings as part of the Little City neighborhood, and the housing investors and contractors built the kind of houses that the middle class wanted to buy. They knew that Bangor's economy was changing, generating a demand for middle- class housing. They capitalized on what they perceived as the middle class's desire for single-family houses in a homogenous neighborhood, and built houses that they thought would appeal to the middle class.

1 James B. Vickery, ed., The Journals of John Ehards Godfrey, Bangor, Maine, vd. 1, 1863 1869 (Rockland, ME: Courier-Gazette, Inc., 1979), 245246. The entry is dated October 14, 1866. * Richard W. Judd, "The Lumber Industry in an Age of Change" in Maine: The Pine Tree State from Prehistory to the Present, Richard W. Judd, Edwin A. Churchill, Joel W. Eastman, eds. (Orono, ME: University of Maine Press, 1995), 410414; Judd, 'The Pulp and Paper Industry, 18651930," in Maine, 426-431; Joel W. Eastrnan, "Transportation Systems in Maine, 1820-80" in Maine, 319. James B. Vickery , Made in Bangor Economic Emergence and Adaptation, 1834- 191 1 (Bangor, ME: Bangor Historical Society, l984), 57,14-18. Sam Bass Warner, Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston (187Gl goo), 2d ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, l962), 121-1 22. 4 Richard W. Judd, "Maine's Resource Economy," in Maine: The Pine Tree State from Prehistory to the Present, eds. Richard W. Judd, Edwin A Churchill, Joel W. Eastman (Orono, ME: University of Maine Press, 1995), 270-271. 5 The Centennial Celebration of the Settlement of Bangor (Bangor: Benjamin A. Burr, 1870), 124. 6 Judd, "Maine's Resource Economy," in Maine, 270-271; Judd, "New Industries in an Age of Adjustment, 1865-1930," in Maine, 426-430; David C. Smith, A History of Lumbering in Maine, 1861-1960 (Orono, ME, 1972), 11-1 3,3742,211-261, 383-418; David C. Smith, 'Lumbering and Shipping in Bangor Port: The Halcyon Days of the Nineteenth Century," in An Illustrated History of Bangor, Maine, rev. ed., ed. James B. Wckery (Bangor, ME: Bangor Bi-Centennial Committee, 1976), 29-38; Judith S. Goldstein, Crossing Lines: Histories of Jews and Gentiles in Three Communities (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1992), 22-29. 7 Joel Eastman, "Transportation and Manufacturing," in Maine, 319; Smith, 220-225. 8 "City of Homes," The lndustrial Journal (May 191O), 51. 9 Many journal articles published at the turn of the twentieth century discuss the need for housing Bangor's growing population: 'City of Homes," lndustrial Journal, May, 1910, 51 ; "Many New Residents are Coming to Town: Real Estate Dealers Report Steady Demand for Bangor Property," Bangor Daily Commercial, 9 March 1918; Bernard M. Kirstein, "Bangor, a City of Homes," Board of Trade Journal 25 (September 1912): 239-240. A comprehensive economic history of Bangor has yet to be written. 10 Goldstein, 29. In his study of the lrish in Bangor in the mid-nineteenth century, James Mundy provides a map of the residential concentration of the lrish population. Most were clustered in the Hancock Street Front Street neighborhoods on the waterfront, as well near Main Street and near the Kenduskeag Stream. James Mundy, Hard Times, Hard Men: Maine and the Irish, 1830-1860 (Scarborough, ME: Harp Publications, 1990), inside front cover. An 1875 atlas of Bangor depicts boarding houses as part of Morse and Company's mill complex on the Kenduskeag Stream. Atlas of Penobscot County, Maine: From Recent and Actual Surveys and Records (New York: Comstock and Cline, l875), plates 66-67. 11 Stuart M. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 13, quote, 277. For a further discussion of the formation of the middle class, see Stuart M. Blumin, "Black Coats to White Collars: Economic Change, Nonmanual Work, and the Social Structure of Industrializing America," in Stuart W. Bruchey, ed., Small Business in American Life (New York: Columbia

University Press, 100-121 and 'The Hypothesis of Middle-Class Fomiation in Nineteenth-Century ' America: A Critique and Some Proposals," American Historical Review 90 (1985): 299-338. Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981), 99; Clifford Clark, The American Family Home, 1800-1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 91-95; Margaret Marsh, Suburban Lives (New Brunswick: Rutgers Universrty Press, lggO), 15-16; Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 50, 72. 12 Warner, 11-14,2931; Jackson, 4647, 116-1 18. Jackson and Warner use an occupational ~nalysisto determine middleclass status. Warner, 52-56; Jackson, 23-24. Judd, in Maine, 271; Wckery, Made in Bangor, 816; Deborah Thompson, Bangor, Maine, 1769-1914: An Architectural History (Orono: University of Maine Press, 1988), 134; James Mundy, Hard Times, Hard Men, 31,4548,60. l4Three projects for middle and upper class housing were proposed in the mid-1830s in Bangor, but were curtailed by the Panic of 1837. One was for 68 row houses and a promenade to surround the City Common (now Chapin Park), one for 114 house lots surrounding Broadway Park, and one for 200 house lots on Thomas Hill. James H. Mundy and Earle G. Shefflewwth, Jr., The Flight of the Grand Eag1e:Charles G. Bryant, Maine Archited and Adventurer (Augusta, ME: Maine Historic Presetvation Commission, 1977), 57-59. l5Warner, 21-26,2931 ; Jackson, 3244, 130-132. 16 Jackson, 39-41. Bangor did have omnibus setvice--a sort of urban stagecoach--for a short time, but it was limited to outer State Street, far from the future development of Little City. Charles D. Heseltine, Bangor Street Railway (Warehouse Point, CT: Wadsworth Press, 1974), 5. 17 Thompson, 123.134; Vickery, Journals, vd. 1, p. 325; Penobscot County Registry of Deeds (henceforth PRD), (Bangor, ME: Penobscot County Courthouse), Planbook 3, p. 61 ; Atlas of Penobscot County, Maine, plate 68C. PRD, vd. 368, p. 225; vd. 390, p. 572; VOI.440, p. 176, Planbook 3, p. 100. 19 Warner suggests that a city needs to be less than three miles in radius to be comfortabty kaversed by foot, as that is the distance an average person can walk in an hour. Warner, 15-17. Heseltine, 6-8, 14. Jackson, 108. 21 Jackson, 116-137. 22 Jackson, 135. 23 Jackson, 120-124,133-137. 24 Warner, 121-122. 25 "Death Of Louis Kirstein Occurs Thursday Morning," Bangor Daily Commercial, 3 January 1924; PRD, vol. 675, pp. 111, 352. Kirstein bought an adjoining one-half acre parcel of land from the heirs of Samuel Harlow 1898. PRD, vd. 640, p. 241. 26 PRD, vol. 675, p. 111, p. 352; PRD, vol. 640, p. 241; PRD, Planbook 6, p. 24; "Julius Waterman Dies in California," Bangor Daily News, 6 February 1904; "Professor George H. Hamlin, Oldest University of Maine Alumnus, Succumbs at 100 at Orono Home," Bangor Daily News, 18 July 1951; City of Bangor Engineer's Office Roadbook, vds. 2 8 3, pp. 252-256; City of Bangor, Mayor's Address, 1899/1900, p. 222; City of Bangor Engineer's Oftice, Report of Superintendent of Sewers (Bangor, ME: Bangor City Hall, ca. 1899). 27 The Bangor and Brewer Directory (Boston: W. A. Greenough 8 Co., 189O), p. 164. For Matthew Lincoln's real estate dealings in Bangor and surrounding towns: Peleg Jones Diaries, 1881, 1883-1894, Peleg Jones Papers, Fogler Library, University of Maine (Jones was Lincoln's lawyer, and he recorded numerous visits from Lincoln about his real estate dealings in his diaries); PRD, Grantee Index, 1884-1899, Grantor Index, 1880-1909; For tracts of land north of Montgomery: PRD, vd. 509, p. 476, 18 March 1880; PRD, vd. 529, p. 407,30 March 1882; PRD, vd. 528, p. 429, 17 May 1882; Survey of lots, PRD, Planbook 6, p. 17. City of Bangor Engineer's Office, Roadbook 3, p. 233,13 August 1896; vol. 3, p. 238 13 July 1897. These are for Grant and Leighton Streets, respectively. Norfolk was laid out 10 August 1910 (Roadbook 3, p. 403) and Fountain Street was laid out in 1913 (Roadbook 4). The land for Fountain Street was deeded to the City of Bangor by Lincoln's heirs (PRD, vd. 846, p. 61, 17 March 1913). 29 City of Bangor Engineer's Ofice, Roadbook 3, p. 238. YL~~i~Kirstein and Sons Real Estate and Insurance," Bangor Daily News, 7 June 1924. PRD, vol. 861, p. 395. 31 The Fairmount park is another example of Kirstein's interaction with other real estate investors. When his firm bought the Hadlock Farm, streets and house lots had already been surveyed, and there was a park in the center of the plan, complete with pathways and drawings of trees. PRD, Planbook 7, p. 20. 32 The working class residents of Little City would not have relied on the streetcar for travel to work. They either had variable job sites (as carpenters, for instance) or walked to work at the nearby Morse Mills. See chapter 2 of this thesis for an indepth analysis of the transportation needs of LieCity residents. 33 Edward M. Graham, John R. Graham (1847-1915) and The Bangor Railway and Electric Co. pew York: The Newcornen Society in North America, 1950). 8-9,ll-13. "Death of Louis Kirstein Occurs Thursday Morning," Bangor Daily Commercial, 3 January 1924; "Property hersProtest Against Assessments for Betterment," Bangor Daily Commercial, 5 August 1911; "Must Begin All Over on Central Street Assessments," Bangor Daily Commercial, 9 August 1911; Jackson, 136. John Graham also developed real estate, but concentrated on commercial and civic buildings in Bangor's downtown. 35 Bangor Daily News, 20 April 1903. 36 Bangor Daily News, 7 September 1903. For high elevation and fine view, Bangor Daily News, 16 May 1903. 37 Bangor Daily Commercial, 5 February 1897. 38 PRD, vd. 599, pp. 142, 143; Warner, 117-122. 39 Deborah Thompson, Survey of Structures Aged FdTy or Older in Bangor Maine (Bangor, ME: Historic Preservation Commission, City of Bangor Code Enforcement Department, 1988), vol. 2, pp. 39,43,44,230-231; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Twelffh Census of the United States Census, 7900: Population (Washington, DC: General Printing Office, 1gOl), Manuscript schedules of the 1900 population census for Bangor, Maine; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States Census, 7910: Population (Washington, DC: General Printing Offii, 191l), Manuscript schedules of the 1910 population census for Bangor, Maine; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States Census, 1920: Population (Washington, DC: General Printing Office, 1921), Manuscript schedules of the 1920 population census for Bangor, Maine Fenceforth, Fourteenth Decennial Census);Jackson, 134 PRD, vd. 714. p. 70. 41 "W. K. Hallett, Retired B & A Offiaal Dies," Bangor Daily News, 30 September 1943; Thompson, Survey, vd. 2, pp. 40,42, 124, 127,128, 182,230; PRD, Planbook 7, p. 41 ; Twelfth, Thirteenth and Fourteenth Decennial Census. 42 Warner, 127, 130. 43 The types of houses that ffirstein, Hallett and other investors constructed in Little City will be addressed in detail in Chapter 3. 44 Bangor Daily Commercial, 8 August 1903. 45 Perhaps Bangor residents did not trust somebody who was not from Maine. Maybe they did not trust Manner's financing proposal. 46 Bangor Daily Commercial, 18 April 1903. 47 PRD, vd. 787, p. 290; vd. 791, p. 149; Planbook 7, p. 20, Planbook 8, p. 37. 48 "Bangor's Early Growth Through Its Lumber, Industry and Energy of Citizens," Bangor Daily Commercial 1934 Bangor Centennial Edition Scrapbook, Bangor Public Library, 70-73. 1 have not found any evidence that the Kirstein agency used restrictive covenants to restrict people on the basis of race or ethnicity. 49 Ibid. Chapter 2

"The Right Kind of People": The Spatial Segregation of the Middle Class in Bangor

In 1872, Robert Graves, a carpenter, bought a house lot at the periphery of Bangor, Maine to escape his crowded downtown neighborhood. By 1880,

Graves, his wife and four children were among six families residing in the area that would come to be known as Bangor's 'Little Cityn neighborhood. Graves and his family continued to live in that location for at least another thirty years, but by

1900, forty-seven other households had joined the Graves family and their neighbors in Little City, taking advantage of the extension of the electric streetcar

line in 1893 to reach their new homes. In 1920, the neighborhood would boast over one hundred houses as well as an active city park, a firehouse, a

neighborhood school, and two hospitals. In the span of a generation, real estate developers, builders and the residents of the neighborhood would transform this thirteen acre parcel from farmland to an active subdivision for Bangor's expanding middle and working classes.

The Industrial Journal commented on the rapid growth of the residential

sections of Bangor in a 1910 article:

One can [hardly] perambulate along Bangor's business highways or automobile through the residential streets without seeing on every hand evidences of the city's growth and expansion. . . . New suburbs springing into being as if by magic, while handsome and expensive residences have been erected all over the city. When asked by a daily newspaper editor as to the occasion of Bangor's prosperity a representative of the Pearl & Dennett company, the favorably known real estate dealers who accomplished the past season such astonishing results in the building up of Homeland where 38 new homes have been erected said, 'We are a sound, prosperous, up-to-date business centre for an enormous growing empire north and east of us, with excellent and constant communications, and with the growth of this empire, which is inevitable, the growth and prosperity of Bangor is so firmly linked that the two are inseparable. . . .' And Louis Kirstein & Sons, among the most successful of Maine's real estate dealers, are duplicating at Fairmount the wonderful success scored by them at the Little City. . . . Bangor indeed has a future as a city of homes.'

As the Pearl and Dennett representative in this article suggested, the prosperity that Bangor enjoyed as a center of commerce for northern and eastern Maine fostered the growth of the city's residential subdivisions, but the census data for households in Little City reveals that Bangor did not develop highly segmented class districts described by urban historians for other American cities. In addition, manufacturing and service enterprises took hold in Little City around the turn of the twentieth centuy2

Little City grew rapidly between the 1890s and the 1920s. Louis Kirstein and other investors energetically promoted the neighborhood to Bangor's middle class through their real estate dealings and marketing strategies. Although builders were successful in recruiting some members of the middle class to the neighborhood, Little City's class composition never completely achieved the homogeneity that Kirstein's promotional materials suggested. A case study of the residents of Little City illustrates that the spatial segregation of classes was not as rigid in Bangor, a small northern city in a rural state, as it was in metropolitan areas in the Northeast and Midwest. Bangor's economy was not large enough or diverse enough to warrant having separate suburbs for the upper middle class, the middle class and the working class. The builders' efforts to attract the middle class to Little City did have a demonstrable effect, however, because the class composition of the district shifted to a preponderance of middle-class residents after the builders expanded their real estate dealings in the area between 1900 and 1910. In 1900, the neighborhood consisted of a mixture of middle and working-class heads of household.

A close analysis of the residents of Little City-their occupations, place of work, ethnicity, and home ownership--reveal the daily patterns of middle-class life in Bangor and their similarities and differences to the middle class in larger

American ~ities.~Census enumeration data, along with tax assessment information and city directories, provide details of the occupational make-up of

Little City residents. In addition, patterns of consumption, as evidenced by their levels of home ownership, the valuation of their houses and household goods, and their employment of servants, supply an index of class. These seemingly mundane details of people's lives reveal their motivations for moving to new surroundings and their strivings for upward social mobility. This snapshot of the denizens of Little City will provide a lens through which to view the strategies

Bangoreans used to negotiate their changing economic fortunes at the turn of the twentieth century.

As The Industrial Journal article described, Little City was one of three areas of the city that burgeoned just as Bangor was undergoing a transformation from a lumber industry boom town to a regional commercial center. Little City was the first of the residential neighborhoods to emerge around the turn of the twentieth century in Bangor, indicating that the economy of Bangor was expanding to meet its demand as a center for economic activity for much of the state of Maine. The other two developments were named "Fairmount" and

"Homeland," and like Little City, they housed Bangor's middle and working c~asses.~

The Graves family provides a good focus for studying the residents in

Little City because of their longevity in the neighborhood and because their story complicates the traditional narrative of the middle class in a streetcar suburb.

Urban historians have detailed how the streetcar allowed the middle class to move to the edge of the city and commute to their jobs downtown, but Robert

Graves' position in society and his peripatetic employment history confounds the scholarly account of the commuting ~uburbanite.~Graves was a blue collar worker who frequently changed jobs, and occasionally worked for himself.

Recent scholarship has refined the model of middle-class suburbanization, but

Graves' socioeconomic status and penchant for periodic changes in employment demonstrate that it was not only the middle class who moved to suburbs at the

border of the central business district, and that not everyone who lived in these

new suburbs worked do~ntown.~Moreover, urban and social historians assert that these newly-created suburbs attracted the middle class at the end of the

nineteenth century, but very little has been written about the people who moved to these neighborhoods.

Stuart Blumin writes that "classes are formed in the variable, historically

specific, day-to-day experiences of ordinary people," and he identifies five areas

that comprise the middle-class experience: work, consumption, residential location, formal and informal voluntary association, and family organization and strategy8 Blumin concentrates on work and other economic aspects of middle- class formation and other scholars have explored the role of voluntary associations.

Historians have primarily studied the residential location of the middle class in metropolitan Northeastern cities, yet suburbanization has been neglected in small towns and rural areas.g Kenneth Jackson and Sam Bass Warner describe large urban areas that were transformed in the mid- to late-nineteenth century by new transportation technology from pre-industrial 'walking citiesn of one to two miles in radius, where people of all classes lived close to their places of work and to each other, to cities where the middle class and the rich moved outside of the city, away from their jobs and the working class and the poor who

lived near the city's core. At first, the very rich moved to the country, as they had the leisure and the means to commute into the city, either with their own horse

and carriage or by a commuter railroad. As intraurban transport became

available, and as the balloon frame made building less expensive, the middle

class moved to the urban periphery, first on the omnibus, then on horse railway

systems. However, it was the electric streetcar, invented in 1884, that

accelerated the move of the middle class outside the city's core. As Jackson writes: "By the turn of the century, a 'new city,' segregated by class and

economic function and encompassing an area triple the territory of the older walking city, had clearly emerged as the center of American urban society."1°

While this model is a useful way of conceptualizing the process of urban growth and class segregation, recent scholarship has added to our understanding of suburbanization and class differentiation.

Blumin, as well as Betsy Blackmar, Alexander von Hoffman and Thomas

Hanchett, have built on the models proposed by Warner and Jackson to include a more nuanced reading of the areal segregation of the city." Betsy Blackmar

has shown that segregation of the classes existed in pre-industrial New York,

although it was not as institutionalized as it became by the late nineteenth century. She also argues that it was the working class, not the middle and upper

classes, who first moved to the city's periphery to escape high rents.12 Blumin describes the periphery of Philadelphia in 1880 between the central business

district and the streetcar suburb of West Philadelphia as a mixture of manual and

nonmanual workers, with the preponderance of manual workers living closer to

downtown, but with many professionals, managers and clerks still living within a

mile or two of the center of the city. However, he makes it clear that nonmanual

and manual workers tended to live in separate neighborhoods. That is, the

middle and working classes began to isolate themselves into different

neighborhoods at the periphery of the city, not just in the distant streetcar

suburbs. "Here was a district," Blumin writes, "not quite suburb and not quite city,

that contributed no less than the suburbs to the separation of classes in urban

space."13 Blumin's analysis of middle-class spatial segregation in Philadelphia

comes closer to the middle-class experience in Bangor than the three-and-a-half

to six-mile commute to streetcar suburbs described by Warner. Robert Graves'

house at the edge of Bangor was just three-quarters of a mile from the center of town. Graves was moving to a neighborhood which was populated with skilled workers like himself. Bangor differed from Philadelphia, however, because the neighborhood that developed beyond Graves1house became a mixture of working-class and upper- and middle-class housing.

Alexander von Hoffman studied Jamaica Plain, one of the streetcar suburbs Warner examined, and found that it was not, as Warner suggested, an enclave of middle-class commuters. Indeed, at the turn of the twentieth century, it was populated by segments of the upper, middle, and working classes. Von

Hoffman discovered that the working classes used the streetcar lines, but not to travel downtown. Instead, they rode the trolleys to work in nearby districts or they worked within Jamaica Plain. In addition, nearby freight lines aided the development of industry in the town, and residents of other Boston neighborhoods commuted to work in the area.14 Similarly, Thomas Hanchett describes Dilworth, Charlotte's first streetcar suburb, as having eight factories near the railroad, as well as mill housing and a section of the town set aside for

African Americans. In spite of an outpouring of publicity by Dilworth's developer,

Edward Dilworth Latta, white-collar workers did not move to the area until the mid-1890s. Hanchett argues that the middle class lacked sufficient motivation to move to Dilworth. 'Charlotte had none of the terrible crowding, the rickety tenements, the teeming immigrants, the angry strikes, and the political upheavals that had accompanied the industrial revolution in the North. Why give up convenient and familiar urban habits in order to commute to some white-collar suburb set apart from the city?"15Von Hoffman and Hanchett have provided compelling evidence that streetcar suburbs in Boston and Charlotte-one heavily industrialized Northern city and the other a Southern city in the beginning stages of industrializationdid not fit the model of suburbs as white-collar enclaves filled with commuters to the central business district. Bangor's Little City, like Jamaica

Plain and Dilworth, did not fit the archetypal suburban image because it contained householders from the upper middle class, the middle class and the working class, and because it contained manufacturing and service industries in addition to dwellings. At various times between 1890 and 1920, the district contained a spring bed company, two private hospitals, a fire station and a small grocery store (figure 23).

Graves moved his family from Garland Street to the corner of Montgomery and Norfolk Streets in 1874, before the construction of widespread intraurban transport in the city. When Graves made this move, he was still within a mile from the center of town, but he obtained a larger, less expensive lot with few neighbors--there was land across Montgomery Street to graze his cow.16 He had moved to the edge of the city, to an area with no neighbors to the north or immediately west of him. However, by 1875, the area south of his house was steadily filling with housing, and within a year, Joseph W. Humphrey and Noah

Dearborn and their families joined Graves on Montgomery Street (figure 24).

Dearborn and Humphrey's occupations do not bear out Blumin's observation about the segregation of classes at the periphery of the city. Dearborn worked as a night watchman at Dole and Fogg, a planing and molding mill on Bangor's waterfront. Humphrey was a successful masonry contractor, who had worked on Figure 23. Service Industries in Little City. Courtesy of Bangor Historical Society. Figure 24. 1875 Atlas of Penobscot County map of Bangor's east side. Note houses of Graves, Humphrey and Dearborn on Montgomery Street. several churches and civic projects in the city. While he is listed in the city directory as a mason, there are several indications that Humphrey was quite prosperous. He owned 111 acres of property between Broadway Avenue and

Essex Street in Bangor that was valued at $3,475 in the 1881 property tax assessment. Also, his house on Montgomery was designed by a prominent

Bangor architect, George Orff, with whom Humphrey had worked on commercial

project^.'^ Further, he must have been well known in the community, because while he and Graves were building their houses at roughly the same time, only

Humphrey's efforts were noted by Bangor Judge John Godfrey in his journal, despite a stated interest in how the area would develop.18

Within the small cluster of houses that stood at the edge of the city in 1875 were three householders: a low white-collar worker (Humphrey), a skilled craftsman (Graves), and an unskilled worker (Dearborn) (figure 25). Olivier Zunz employs these designations in his discussion of how the intersection of race and class affected the spatial distribution of the citizens of Detroit between 1880 and

1920.'~Zunz distinguishes between nonmanual and manual workers, and then further distills the nonmanual category into high and low white-collar workers, and the manual workers into skilled occupations and semiskilled and unskilled occupations. The high white-collar classification includes merchants and the professions (physicians, lawyers, dentists, and architects). The low white-collar group consists of all other nonmanual occupations, embracing jobs from engineers and teachers to salesmen and clerks, whether they worked in offices or in shops. The skilled workers category consists of vocations that called for the Figure 25. 1875 Bird's Eye View of the City of Bangor-close-up of Montgomery Street. Graves, Humphrey and Dearborn lived on the eastern end of Montgomery (east of Norfolk Street), and Battles and Veazie lived on the western end (west of Fountain Street). Bottom map illustrates where Montgomery Street is located in relation to Bangor (Montgomery Street is circled). worker to use his or her hands and required some training or skill, and so includes trades such as carpenters, bricklayers, machinists, barbers, nurses, and seamstresses. The semiskilled and unskilled category includes those manual jobs that demanded little training or skill, including janitors and domestic ser~ants.~'

Little City included members of all four occupational groups in the mid-

1870s, and would continue to do so until at least 1920. In addition to Graves,

Humphrey and Dearborn, who represented low white-collar, skilled and unskilled occupations, men who held high white-collar positions lived on the opposite end of Montgomery Street (see figure 25). These were the men that Godfrey discussed in his passage about the street in his journal, and they typified his expectations for the neighborhood. One was Amory Battles, a Universalist minister, and the other was Jones P. Veazie, a lumber baron and the son of

Samuel Veazie, who amassed a fortune in lumbering and in the railroad. When they built their mansions in the late 1850s and early 1870s, that area of town was the country, and they rode to their places of work in fine ~aniages.~'

Godfrey's prediction that Montgomery Street would be lined with mansions proved to be mistaken. Members of the high white-collar group in Bangor lived in

Little City, but the neighborhood was not exclusively upper-middle class. This also runs counter to Jackson and Warner's argument that the wealthy and upper- middle class lived in distant railroad suburbs. In the mid-1870s and in the census of 1880, there were six households in the area that would come to be known as

Little City, and two of those households were affiuent. By 1900 and continuing through 1920, the high white-collar group comprised only twenty to twenty-five

percent of the neighborhood population (table 1). Therefore, some high white-

collar workers of Bangor lived in a neighborhood that contained primarily low

white-collar and skilled workers. To understand the reason they chose to live in a

socio-economically integrated middle-class neighborhood, we need to examine

their available alternatives.

Table 1. Class Composition of Little City Heads of Households,

I High White-collar 33% 20% 24% 22% I Low W hite-Collar 33% 44% 59% 63% I Skilled Workers 17% 30% 15% 14% I Unskilled Workers 17% 6% 2% 2% I The 1890 United States Census was destroyed, so data from that year is missing. Vote: Not all columns total 100% due to rounding.

Railroad suburbs did not appear north or east of Bangor. The Bangor and

Aroostook Railroad and the Maine Central Railroads brought freight into Bangor, and the Maine Central carried vacationers to remote spots in Maine, but there was no suburb of railroad commuters in the Bangor area? Electric streetcars lines sewed

Charleston, Old Town and Hampden, but these towns were not commuter suburbs.

The Charleston route was used principally for freight, and the mill village of Old

Town did not attract Bangor's middle class. Orono, which was also on the Bangor,

Orono and Old Town Street Railway line, had a larger percentage of high white collar workers in its population, but most were employed at the state land grant college founded there in 1865.~

The town of Hampden, south of Bangor on the banks of the Penobscot River, also did not fill the model of the distant commuter suburb around the turn of the twentieth century. First, high white-collar workers constituted a small fraction of

Hampden's population. The majority of its household heads were blue-collar workers and farmers.24Second, passengers travelling between Hampden and Bangor went by electric streetcar rather than the railroad. The Bangor, Hampden and Winterport

Street Railway was not operational until the end of 1896, so this option would not have been available until the end of the nineteenth century. The fare to Hampden was only slightly higher than taking the trolley within Bangor, so the transportation costs did not prevent members of the low white-collar occupational group from moving there as well. Further, the village was only thirty minutes away by streetcar, which made it within the reach of a large segment of the population. Third, Hampden did not develop the type of community institutions that were hallmarks of late

nineteenth-century railroad suburbs, such as private country clubs. The exclusive

Conduskeag Canoe and Country Club was used primarily by affluent Bangor

residents, and Riverside Park, a favorite destination at the end of the streetcar line in

Hampden, attracted members of all classes. Operated by the streetcar company to encourage ridership on the streetcar line, Riverside Park was located on the

Penobscot River and contained an open-air theater with weekly programs, a

midway, a casino and a boat-rental facility.25

With few choices outside of Bangor, the high white-collar group congregated within the city limits, and there, residents had a number of choices. In addition to Little City, real estate developers built two other sections of Bangor in the early twentieth century: Fairmount and Homeland. These two developments, however, did not attract the upper middle class. While approximately 25 percent of Little City's heads of households were from the high white-collar group, virtually none of

Fairmount and Homeland's householders held high white-collars occupations between 1900 and 1920. The majority of heads of households in Fairmount and

Homeland held low white-collar positions, while about one-third of the them belonged to skilled occupations (table 2)? Pearl and Dennett did not aggressively market Homeland to the high or low white-collar occupational groups, so the class composition of this neighborhood is not surprising. Since Kirstein and Sons developed both Little City and Fairmount, and used similar marketing strategies for both neighborhoods, one would expect that the neighborhoods would have a similar class composition. The fact that Little City drew more high white-collar residents to the neighborhood suggests that other factors besides real estate strategies attracted the upper-middle class to the district2'

Table 2. Class Composition of Residential Districts in Bangor, 1901-1 920

Little City Fairmount Homeland

N=37 N=30 N=25

High white-collar 14% 3% 4%

Low white-collar 65% 60% 68%

Skilled workers 22% 33% 28%

Unskilled workers 0% 3% 0%

Note: rlot all columns total 100% due to rounding. The high white-collar workers were attracted to Little City by the region's unique geographical features and by the fact that some of Bangor's wealthy and upper-middle class already resided in the area. Judge Godfrey's prediction that the neighborhood would be filled with estates for the wealthy may explain the high white- collar group's preference for Little City over the other sections of town. The mansions along Montgomery Street, in addition to the fine dwellings on nearby

Kenduskeag Avenue, lent the neighborhood a patina of affluence that enticed the upper-middle class to the area. The majority of the high white-collar occupational residents lived in architect-designed houses on Montgomery Street in 1900, near the mansions of the wealthy, and in 1910 they resided primarily on Montgomery and

Center Streets (figure 26). By 1920, most of the high white-collar families still lived on Montgomery and Center Streets, but a significant number also lived on some of the newly added streets in the neighborhood (figures A.1, A.2 and A.3 in Appendix

A). Louis Kirstein added to Center Street's prestige when he engaged C. Parker

Crowell, a Bangor architect, to design a large colonial revival home for his family on that street in 1911. It was common practice for subdividers to build their own homes in neighborhoods they developed as a means of marketing the area.28(figure 27).

In addition to the homes of the wealthy, the district's pastoral landscape drew

Bangor residents to the area that would evolve into Little City. Located on a hill overlooking the city, Little City afforded its residents good views of the surrounding area, as Godfrey discussed in his journal. Also, the people of Bangor were acquainted with the area beyond Montgomery because in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, people would go for all day picnics at 'First Grove," the stand of maples that Godfrey mentioned in his 1866 diary entry about Montgomery Figure 26. Architect-designed houses on Montgomery Street. Courtesy of Bangor Historical Society. Figure 27. Louis Kirstein's house on Center Street, with nameplate on door Street. "Northward, a few steps, is a grove of maples, and in it are standing and lying a herd of cows enjoying themselves in the shade of, [sic] the partially leafless and brown trees.n29Neither Fairmount nor Homeland could boast such picturesque sites.

The proportion of high white collar heads of household in Little City was constant at just over twenty percent between 1900 and 1920, but the composition of low white-collar and skilled workers changed considerably between 1900 and 1910.

Little City became more clearly middle class after 1900 due to a combination of factors that encouraged the middle-class to move to the area, but deterred the working class. While those in the low white-collar group formed a distinct majority of the household heads after 1910, those in the skilled occupational category decreased from a third of the household heads in 1900 to half that amount after

1910.~

There are four reasons for the movement to a greater concentration of middle than working class residents in Little City between 1900 and 1910. First, as Bangor's economy shifted to service as opposed to lumber exports, the managers, clerks and professionals of the new economy needed a place to live. Second, the extension of the streetcar line through the center of the neighborhood attracted the middle-class to the district. Third, the nearby job options available to skilled workers changed between 1900 and 1910, which affected the class composition of Little City. Fourth, the Kirstein agency's marketing strategy and their establishment of restrictive covenants contributed to making Little City more middle than working class in character.

The establishment of railroad networks in Bangor illustrates how the transformation to a service economy affected the growth of Little City. A number of householders in the district worked for the railroads as postal clerks, auditors, dispatchers, engine men, traffic managers and attorneys. William Hallett, who developed a portion of the neighborhood, rose from a clerk at the Bangor and

Aroostook in 1900 to become general manager of the line by 1920. Other low white- collar workers in the area demonstrate that Bangor had become a service economy: they were proprietors and managers of small shops, salespersons, clerks and bookkeepers, and worked in hospitals, newspapers and schools.

The electric street railroad allowed white-collar workers to travel to their places of work in the central business district and live at the periphery of the city, contributing to the growth of residential subdivisions. In 1893, the Bangor Street

Railway established its Center Street line, which terminated at Center and Congress

Streets, one block south of Montgomery Street. In 1902, the Street Railway extended the line to Center and Poplar Streets, along the eastern boundary of Little

City. The Bangor Street Railway expanded the line again in 1904, creating a loop that went through the heart of Little City, traveling west on Poplar and south on

Leighton, eventually joining Center Street again a few blocks south of the neighborhood (figure 28). A celebration was held in the neighborhood upon the completion of the loop with members of the city council arriving in a special streetcar for a concert by the Bangor b and.^' Little City was the only planned neighborhood in

Bangor that had streetcars traveling directly through its center. Streetcar lines bordered Fairmount and Homeland, but they did not go through those neighborhoods. The 1904 loop through Little City was the last expansion of the

Bangor Street Railway within the city, and building did not begin in earnest in

Homeland until 1907 and in Fairmount until 1909.~~ Figure 28. Liffle City loop of Bangor Street Railway The low white-collar occupational group used the electric streetcar more frequently to get to work than the skilled workers, which contributed to the greater concentration of low white-collar workers in the neighborhood after 1910." Most of the low white collar heads of household worked downtown from 1900 to 1920, and the streetcar was a convenient way for them to travel to their jobs. In contrast, roughly half of the skilled workers held jobs at the city's core. The rest worked locally, either at Morse's Mills on the nearby Kenduskeag Stream, at Day's Spring

Bed Factory within the district, or in one of the two neighborhood hospitals. Many of the skilled workers were house carpenters, in which case their work sites varied. The

Bangor Street Railway's extension of the Center Street line would have encouraged low white-collar workers to move to the area, whereas it would not have affected the decision of many skilled workers to move to Little City (table B.l in Appendix B).

While the presence of local job sites drew the working class to the neighborhood in the late nineteenth century, after 1900 the number of skilled workers in the neighborhood declined, in part because of the movement of industry out of the neighborhood. Some of the skilled workers who lived in the neighborhood in 1900 worked at Day's Spring Bed Manufacturing Company on Linden Street. The factory burned in 1907, and its proprietor, Herbert Day, moved it to Front street."

He probably would not have been able to build it in Little City again because of

Kirstein's deed restrictions, which stipulated residential building only? After the factory moved to the waterfront, Day was the only spring bed employee who lived in

Little City until his son and brother moved into the neighborhood sometime before

1920, and both these men were in management? However, movement of industry out of the area surrounding Little City did not necessarily account for the decrease in skilled workers living in the district. The Morse and Company Mills, along the

Kenduskeag Stream, was the largest manufacturing concern in early twentieth century Bangor, yet the number of Morse blue-collar employees who lived in Little

City steadily declined from 1900 to 1920, suggesting that convenience was not the only reason Bangor householders chose to live in Little City. Kirstein's promotional activities and the higher costs of houses also convinced those with skilled occupations to look e~sewhere.~'

The Louis Kirstein and Sons Real Estate Agency vigorously promoted the neighborhood to the middle class and discouraged the working class from moving to the neighborhood through the use of deed restrictions which stipulated minimum construction costs. Kirstein's advertisements for Little City were plainly meant to appeal to the middle class. Their notices' emphasis on 'the right kind of people" and

'desirable homes occupied by their owners" demonstrate that Kirstein and Sons envisioned an upper-middle or middle-class population for the neighborhood. They promised special terms to the right parties, confirming that the firm was actively soliciting members of the middle and upper classes, as the agency financed as well as sold real estate. In another classified ad about the neighborhood, the Kirstein agency promoted the 'high grade of homes, occupied by their owners" along with the 'high elevation" and 'fine view" touted earlier by Godfrey, conferring social status upon the location and the homes that were built there?

Deed restrictions established by the Kirstein agency also ensured that only people with sufficient income could move to the area, which in turn affected the housing valuation in the neighborhood. When Herbert Day bought a house lot from

Kirstein and his business partners George Hamlin and Julius Waterman in 1901, he agreed that any house he constructed on that lot must cost no less than $1800 to build.39Kirstein and Sons acknowledged that they wanted to keep the working class out of the neighborhood. In a newspaper article celebrating Bangor's centennial,

Abram Kirstein, Louis Kirstein's son and then president of the Kirstein agency described Little City as "a restricted section where all the homes and the grounds are kept in attractive c~ndition."~Kirstein continued that similar restrictions were put in place in Fairmount, such as the type of buildings that could be constructed and minimum set-backs from the street.

The difference in house valuations between 1900 and 1910 reflects the restrictive covenants in the deeds. The average house valuation of skilled workers' homes was about $1270 in 1900, whereas it in 1910 it was almost $2300, a rise of

46 percent and well above the $1800 minimum amount set by Kirstein and his partners. In contrast, the average house valuation of homes owned by members of the low white-collar group only increased 10 percent, from an average house valuation of just over $2300 in 1900 to almost $2600 in 1910 (table 3). Therefore, the deed restrictions not only discouraged the working class from moving to the neighborhood, the skilled workers that did move to the area resided in more costly houses than their predecessors. This suggests that the skilled workers who moved to Little City had middle-class aspirations and were able to afford these houses. 81

Table 3. Average House Valuation by Class, 1900-1920 - 1900 1910

Highwhite-collar N=6 $2800 N=13 $2877

Low White-collar N=17 $2325 N=40 $2581

Skilled Workers ~=9$1272 ~=ll$2287

Unskilled Workers ~=2All renters N=2 $2225

I A In 1900 dollars. Tax valuation for 1920 not comparable because the City of Bangor began to tax buildings and land separately.41

These figures indicate that the valuation of all of the houses in the neighborhood increased, because the average house valuation included houses that were built after 1900 as well as existing houses. While this may suggest that people were building larger or more expensive houses, it also points to the fact that the location of the houses increased their value. That is, by 1910, the Bangor tax assessors took into account Little City's desirability as a location when determining house valuations for the city.

Levels of home ownership promoted the higher valuation of homes. Little City residents owned their homes at nearly twice the rate of Bangor residents as a whole in 1900 and 1910, regardless of their class (table B.2 in Appendix B). Class did not affect homeownership. While the low white-collar group were slightly more likely to own their homes than skilled workers in 1900, by 1910 about 80 percent of the low white-collar and skilled workers owned their homes in Little city." Certainly the

Kirstein firm used the levels of homeownership in the district as a selling point.

The racial and ethnic make-up of Little City occupants confirm that the neighborhood's developers and residents conceived of a district that excluded some elements of the population. Despite the large number of Irish immigrants in Bangor and Franco-American immigrants in Maine in general, Little City had virtually no

householders representing these groups. In addition, Bangor had a very small

African-American population around the turn of the twentieth century, and even

smaller Native American and Chinese populations, and none of them lived in Little

~ity.~Similarly, Little City had a much smaller percentage of foreign-born residents than Bangor as a whole. The majority of the foreign-born in Little City were Canadian

English and Swedish. There were no immigrants from outside of Western Europe in

the neighborhood until sometime between 1910 and 1920, when Harry Golden, a

Russian Jew, and his wife Annie moved to Norfolk Street, with the exception of Louis

Kirstein himself, who had immigrated from ~ermany.~~

The transformation of Bangor's economy from a lumber boom town to a

regional commercial economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century

created an expanding middle class that required new houses. Its upper-middle class

concentrated in Little City, while its middle and working classes resided in Little City

and two other early twentieth-century Bangor developments, Fairmount and

Homeland.

Although Bangor's neighborhoods were not as spatially segregated by class

as metropolitan northeastern and midwestern cities, the developers of Little City

managed to achieve some degree of areal separation through marketing strategies

and their use of restrictive covenants to increase the cost of building a house in the

neighborhood. The available transportation and job opportunities also encouraged

more members of the middle class than the working class to move to the area. However, Bangor's economy was not sufficiently large or diverse enough to create distinct suburbs for the upper-middle, middle and working classes.

1 'Ciof Homes," Industrial Joumal (May 191O), 51. Sam Bass Wamer, Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston (1870-1900), 2"d ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 46-66; Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, l985), 116-1 37. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Tenth Census of the United States Census, 1880: Population (Washington, DC: General Printing Office, 1881), Manuscript schedules of the 1880 population census for Bangor, Maine; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, TweMh Census of the United States Census, 1900: Population (Washington, DC: General Printing Office, 1901), Manuscript schedules of the 1900 population census for Bangor, Maine; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States Census, 1910: Population (Washington, DC: General Printing Office, 191A), Manuscript schedules of the 1910 population census for Bangor, Maine; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States Census, 1920: Population (Washington, DC: General Printing Office, 1921), Manuscript schedules of the 1920 population census for Bangor, Maine (henceforth, Fourteenth Decennial Census). Deborah Thompson, Bangor, Maine, 1769-1914 (Orono, ME: University of Maine Press, l988), 494; Directory of Bangor and Brewer (Bangor, ME: Cannon & Co., IgOg), 113. 3 Stuart Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760- 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 258285. 4 I used census enumeration data from 1880, IgOO, 1910 and 1920 for people who lived in the eight- block area that comprises Little City, about 125 houses altogether (the 1890 Federal census was destroyed thus unavailable for analysis). The census data gives each person's name, relationship to the head of household, sex, race, age, marital status and number of years married; their place of birth, citizenship status, the birthplace of their mother and father; their occupation and the amount of time they have missed work; whether they can read and write, and whether they speak English; whether they own or rent their home; and if they do own it, whether they own it 'free" or whether they have a mortgage, and whether they live in a house or on a farm. Itracked 936 persons using this information. Tenth, TweMh, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Decennial Censes. I also consulted tax records for the heads of household. The annual tax assessment and the assistant assessor's ward returns yielded information about the valuation of the house, furniture, pianos, organs, livestock, stock holdings, bicycles (beginning in 1890), and automobiles (beginning in 1910) for each household. It also included the number of persons in each household (creating a convenient check with the census information) and the place of mrk for the head of the household. As the census is taken every ten years, I tried to find the tax assessment information for the year closest to the year of the census. In addition, Ifound information in Bangor city directories when I could not find that data in the census or tax assessment ledgers. I found information about places where Little City residents worked in the city directories. Collector of Taxes for Bangor, Maine, 1881, 1900, 1910, Special Cdlections, Fogler Library, University of Maine, Orono, ME; Collector of Taxes for Bangor, Maine, 1919, 1920, Bangor Public Library, Bangor, ME; Schedule of Taxable Pdls and Personal Property for Bangor, Maine, 1881, 1900, 191 0, Special Collections, Fogler Library, University of Maine, Orono, ME; Bangor/Brewer City Directory, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920. 5 Deborah Thompson, Bangor, Maine, 447. 6 Jackson, 46-66; Warner, 116-1 37. Graves' move to the edge of the built-up area of Bangor conforms more closely with Betsy Blackmar's description of spatial segregation in early nineteenth century New York, where the working class were the first to mwe to the periphery in search of cheaper rents. Graves' actions depart from this model because he mwed to the edge of the city much later than Blackmar suggests, and because he owned, rather than rented, his house. However, his house valuation was lower after his mweto Montgomery Street from his previous residence on Cumberland, which was approximately one-hatf a mile doser to town. Betsy Blackmar, 'Rewalking the Walking City':Housing and Property Relations in New York City, 1780-1840," in Material Life in America, 16W1860,ed. Robert Blair St. George (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988), 376-377. 8 Blumin, 11-1 2. 9 Jackson, 56;Warner's monograph is a study of three Boston suburbs. In his epilogue, Blumin calls for an exploration of middle-class emergence in small towns and rural areas; Blumin, 298-31 0. loWarner, 5244; Jackson, 73-1 02, 116-137, quote, 115. Warner and Jackson have somewhat different definitions of the middle class, and different descriptions of their geographic location in the city. Warner differentiates between the 'central middle dass--the owners of small downtown stores, successful salesmen and commercial travelers, lawyers, school teachers, and the large contractors," who lived in streetcar suburbs, and the 'lower middle class. . .included the small shopkeepers, skilled artisans, the better-paid office and sales personnel," who needed to live dose to good cross-town streetcar lines; Warner, 53-56. Jackson is less precise about the transportation needs of suburban residents. He states that "the sales target [for lots at the city's periphery] was often the 'little man,' the yrkingclass clerks, mechanics, and struggling businessmen." Jackson, 129. Blumin, 275285; Blackmar, 371-382. Alexander von Hoffman, Local Attachments: the Making of an American Urban Neighborhood, 1850 to 1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); Thomas W. Hanchett, Sorting Out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875 1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998). 12 Graves' move to the edge of the built-up area of Bangor conforms more dosely with Betsy Blackmar's description of spatial segregation in early nineteenth century New York. Graves' actions depart from this model because he moved to the edge of the city much later than Blackmar suggests, and because he owned, rather than rented, his house. However, his house valuation was lower after his move to Montgomery Street from his previous residence on Cumberland, which was a roximatety one-half a mile doser to town. Blackmar, 376-377. Blumin, 11-12. "Elumin. 283. Actually. Blumink analysis is more detailed than my characterization suggests. He wn'tes of an earlier 'street-alley" segregation of the dasses, whereby the nonmanual workers resided on broad streets and manual workers lived in the same neighborhood, but on narrower streets (alleys). He states that this configuration remained until the 1880s in Philadelphia in neighborhoods that bordered the downtown. He does not state why the later neighborhoods at the periphery of the city were segregated by class, but Warner and Jackson have convincingly demonstrated that the availability of home financing and access to cross-town streetcar lines contributed to spatial segregation in the city. Blumin, 276-285. 14 von Hoffman, 24-25. 15 Hanchett, 57-65, quote, 65 and 67. 16 The valuation on Graves earlier home was $800 in 1874; the valuation on his Norfolk residence was $650 in 1874 and 1881. It appears it took Graves some time to build his house. The 1874 directory lists Graves' residence as the corner of Norfolk and Montgomery, but the 1881 tax assessment records an unfinished house at that location among his assets. The 1881 tax shows that \?e Norfolk location is the site of his residence and his place of business. Thompson, Bangor, Maine, 318,372, 397-98,640 n. 259. 18 James B. Vickery, ed., The Journals of John Edwards Godfrey, Bangor, Maine, vol. 2, 1870-1877 (Rockland, ME: Courier-Gazette, Inc., 1984), 114 (henceforth referred to as Godfrey Journals). This pssage was dated December 1.1872. Olivier Zunz, The Changing Face of Inequal~ty:Urbanization, Industrial Development, and Immigrants in Detroit, 1880-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1982). 420-433. Zunz also uses the label "high white-collaf worker. Zunz analyzed segments of the Detroit population for the years 1880, 1900, and 1920 using census data and income figures from BLlS surveys done of workers in the 1890s and sorted them into these larger categories. He compared his occupational coding scheme to those developed by historians Stephan Thernstrom and Theodre Hershberg and the standard occupational prestige scale created by Donald Treiman, and found them all to be fairly similar. See Stephan Themstrom, The Other Bostonians (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 290-92; Theodore Hershberg and Robert Dockhorn, 'Occupational Classification," Historical Methods Newsletter 9 (MarchJune i976), 78-98; Theodore Hershberg, et al., 'Occupation and Ethnicity in Five Nineteenth-Century Cities: A Collaborative Inquiry," Historical Methods Newsletter 7 (June 1973), 174-216; Donald J. Treiman, Occupational Prestige in Comparative Pefspedive (New York: Academic Press, 1977), 235-60. Zunz compares these methods of occupational coding in a table on D. 423. *OZunz uses this occupational coding scheme for data gathered from the 1880 and 1900 manuscript censes. Starting with 1910 census, the Census Bureau began distinguishing between those who employed other workers, those who worked for wages or salaries, and those who worked for themselves ('on their own account"). In addition to the occupational category, the Bureau began to indicate the type of industry where the individual worked. This was a response to the creation of new occupations by the early twentieth century, induding the profusion of service industry jobs. Zunz developed a new occupational classification system for his 1920 analysis, based upon the more precise occupational classification in the 1920 census. I have chosen to use the categories he outlined for 1920, as they do reflect the increase in service sector jobs, but have converted them back into the earlier, broad categories of high and low-white collar, and skilled and unskilled groups for my analysis of the Little Cii population of 1910 and 1920 for ease of comparison. Although the coding scheme that Zunz uses for 1920 is more refined than the one he uses for 1880 and 1900, the switch in occupational coding schemes makes it difficutt to assess change over time. Zunz, 421. *'There are several indications that Battles was affluent. Bangor's tax assessment of 1881 did not list Battle's house valuation, but J. J. Stoner's 1875 bird's-eye view depicts an imposing residence. The house was built 1857-59. The 1881 tax assessment shows that Battles owned a horse and carriage. In addition, Judge Godfrey wrote in his journal that when Battles contemplated mwing to Massachusetts in 1867, his congregation raised his salary to $2000, and Battle agreed to stay. Battles is technically outside of Little City, as he lived to the west of Fountain Street, which forms the western border of Little City proper. Wckery, Godfrey Journals, vol. 1, 305. Godfrey, who was a judge of probate, wrote that Veazie left $200,000 when he died in 1875, though he 'obtained his [fortune] without doing much of anything." Wckery , Godfrey Journals, vol. 2, 205. Veazie's mansion was built 1874-75 and was valued at $10,000 in 1881 (including the grounds and camage house). His camage ysvalued at $500, and his horse at $100. Thompson, Bangor, Maine, 255,310-312. Joel W. Eastrnan, 'Transportation Systems in Maine, 1820-1880," in Maine: The Pine Tree State from Prehistory to the Present, Richard W.Judd, Edwin A. Churchill, Joel W. Eastrnan, eds. (Orono, ME: University of Maine Press, 1995), 31 1-319; Henry G. Stenberg, Jr., 'A Study of Maine Central Railroad Passenger Service Since 1900," (Master's Thesis, University of Maine, 1965). 23 Heseltine, 16-22, 32,6142; Old Town Diredory, l9l@ll (Bangor, ME: Cannon & Co., 191 1); David C. Smith, The First Century: A History of the University of Maine, 18651965 (Orono, ME University of Maine at Orono Press, 1979), 1-22. 24~ampden'spopulation included 7% high whitecollar, 24% low whitecollar, 35% skilled, 19% unskilled workers, and 15% farmers in 1904. The Hampden Register 1904 (Kent's Hill, ME: H. E. Mitchell Publishing Co., 1904). '' Hampden Historical Society, Historical Sketches of the Town of Hampden, Maine, 1767-1976, 2000 rev. ed. (Ellsworth: Ellsworth American, 1976), 62-67; Heseltine, 23-26. Abigail Ewing Zdz and Marilyn Zoidis, Woodsmen and Whigs: Historic Images of Bangor, Maine (Virginia Beach, VA: The Donning Co.. 1991). 141. 26 1 used names on the preservation survey and information in city directories to determine the occupations of heads of households in Fairmount and Homeland, so the list of household heads in these neighborhoods was not as complete as the LieCity list of household heads, which I gathered from the Federal manuscript census. To check if the difference in number of high white-collars was due to the difference in methodology, I gathered information about the Lile City household heads using just the preservation survey and city directories, and I still found a significant difference in the percentage of high white-collars between Little City and the two other neighborhoods. See Table 2.2. Deborah Thompson, Survey of Structures F~ftyYears and Older (Bangor, ME: Historic Preservation Commission, 1987), vd. 1,221-233; part 11 1, 13-21,86-87,109, 126-128,222-229; 276-282,323- 328,404408; Bangor and Brewer City Diredory, l89F~l92l. 27 The real estate developers of Little Cii, Fairmount, and Homeland are discussed in Chapter 1. Jackson, 134. 29 Thompson, Bangor, Maine, 256. Wckery, Godfrey Journals, vd. 3, p. 246. The entry is dated October 14, 1866. The grove of trees Gocffrey refers to are depicted in figure 29, the 1875 Bird's-Eye- View of Bangor. 30 I am equating high white-collar and low whitecollar residents with middle-class status, and skilled and unskilled workers with workingclass status after Blumin, who uses nonmanual and manual occupations to distinguish between middle and working dass. Blumin's study ends in 1900, but he suggests that after 1900, income levels of manual and nonmanual workers began to werlap. However, he indicates that the overlap is due to the expansion of sewice sector jobs, especially low- paid derk positions, rather than an increase in wages for manual work. So, while the type of work and class affiliation become increasingly blurred in the twentieth century, the manuaVnonmanual distinction still seems to hold for the early decades of the twentieth century. Much more work needs to be done on this subject, especially for small cities and rural areas. Blumin, 12, 290-299. 31 Heseltine, 14, 15; Bangor Daily News, August 14, 1904. 32 Heseltine, 15; Thompson, Survey, vd. I., 221-233; vd. 3, 1321, -7, 109, 126128,222-229, 276-282,323328,404408. Louis Kirstein was a business associate of John Graham, the director of the Bangor Street Railway. Kirstein probably persuaded Graham that extending the trolley line through Little City would increase the street railway's revenue. See chapter 1 for additional information. 33 Warner, 52-56. 34 Hazel Smith Diary. Hazel Smith Papers. Bangor Historical Society. Entry is dated March 30, 1907. 35 Penobscot County Registry of Deeds (Bangor, ME: Penobscot County Couthouse), vd. 714, p. 70 pceforth PRD). In 1900, four skilled operators at Day's Spring Bed company lived in Little City. Two of them were boarders. TweMh Decennial Census. 37 James B. Vickery, Made in Bangor: Economic Emergence and Adaptation, 1834-191 1 (Bangor, ME: Bangor Historical Society, l984), 14-15,24. 38~angorDaily News, May 16,1903. 39 PRD, vd. 714, p. 70. &~angor's Early Growth Through Its Lumber, Industry, and Energy of Citizens," Bangor Daily Commercial 1934 Bangor Centennial Scrapbmk, Bangor Public Library, 70-73. 41 "The Assessors' Map," Bangor Daily Commercial, 18 July 1912. 42 Homeownership statistics are unavailable for Bangor for 1920. Zunz found that immigrants in Detroit were more likely to own their homes than native-born whites of the same occupation and age group in the late nineteenth century; Zunz, 154-158. See also Carolyn Tyirin Kirk and Gordon W. Kirk, Jr., "The Impact of the City on Home Ownership: A Comparison of Immigrants and Native Whites at the Turn of the Century," Journal of Urban History, 7 (August 1981), 471-188, and Daniel D. Luria, Wealth, Capital, and Power: The Social Meaning of Home Ownership," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 7 (August 1976), 277-79. 43 The percentage of African Americans in Bangor was 0.5% in 1870 and 1880. It was 0.8% in 1900, 1910 and 1920. The combined total of Native Americans and Chinese and Japanese Americans was less than 0.10% throughout the period. (The Census Bureau combined their totals in 1910 and 1920, and the Chinese were not counted in 1870 and 1880.) TweMh, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Decennial Censes. Judith Gddstein points out the different socio-emnomic status of German and Russian Jews in Maine. Unlike Russian Jews, most German Jews were literate, and were quicker to assimilate into American society. Kirstein, along with his business partner Julius Waterman, was one of a handful on German Jews in Bangor, and they were all socially prominent. As a rule, Kirstein disassociated himself from the Jewish community in Bangor. Judith S. Gddstein, Crossing Lines: Histories of Jews and Gentiles in Three Communities (New York: William Morrow 8 Co., 1992), 4445. For ethnic composition of Bangor, United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistics of the Population of the United States of the Tenth Census (Washington, DC: General Printing Office, 1883); United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistics of the Population of the United States of the TweMh Census (Washington, DC: General Printing Office, 1901); United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistics of the Pcyoulation of the United States of the Thirteenth Census (Washington, DC: General Printing Office, 1913); United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistics of the Population of the United States of the Fourteenth Census (Washington, DC: General Printing Office, 1921). United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistics ofthe Population of the United States of the Thirteenth Census (Washington, DC: General Printing Office, 1913). Chapter 3

"The Right Kind of Houses": Domestic Arrangements in Little City

In 1910, The Industrial Journal, a Bangor business publication, printed an article about the rapid spread of the bungalow in Maine:

In the New England house of twenty years ago a hall was a necessity, a second story a necessity and a parlor a necessity. Not to have a hall left one with no proper entrance; . . .and a special room in which to receive guests and entertain them was the first consideration, for there all the choice furniture and belongings were placed. The modern house is the bungalow; it is all first floor, with one large room, known as the living room, into which the front door usually opens. This living room is quite the largest room in the house. . . . It is the room about which the household centers- library, sitting room, music room and writing room, all combined. . . . No woman a few years ago would have thought she could live in a house of one story, a one-room house. But the times have changed, and to have a bungalow is now the acme of desire.'

This quote describes a transformation in the configuration of the ideal middle-

class house around the turn of the twentieth century. It also alludes to the

relationship between models of domestic architecture and family life. Many

housing reformers in the Progressive Era believed that middle class houses

should respond to changes taking place in American family life at the turn of the

century. As families spent more time together in recreational pursuits and

adopted a more casual lifestyle, these reformers argued that domestic

architecture should change to accommodate an increasingly relaxed relationship

among family members and with visitors. Most revealing was the reformer's call

for a transition in floor plans, from the highly formalized, segmented plans of the

1870s and 1880s, to a more open, flexible floor plan. The ideal house type that reformers put forward for fostering ideal relationships among family members was the bunba~ow,and in middle-class suburbs throughout the United States, this new type of housing swiftly gained in popularity (figures 29 and 30).2

Despite The lndustrial Journal's contention that the bungalow was the

'acme of desire," Bangor's builders responded unevenly to reform literature.

Rather than open-plan bungalows, they constructed houses combining traditional and reform elements in their room organization. An analysis of houses built in Little City in the first two decades of the twentieth century reveals that

Bangor's builders and developers did not believe that middle-class residents were prepared for the wholesale reorganization of their domiciles as outlined in

The lndustrial Journal. Instead, they offered Bangor's middle class a menu of plans illustrating an environment of shifting ideals about middle-class family life.

The houses that builders constructed in Little City contain hybrid plans that included elements of both the late Victorian segmented floor plan and elements of the Progressive ideal open floor plan (figure 31). Most important, Little City's houses overwhelmingly retained the Victorian-era stair hall, indicating a continued concern for establishing a buffer zone for mediating non-family members' entrance into the home. At the same time, Little City houses virtually all rejected the nineteenth-century parlor space in favor of the reform-oriented

'living room," which was more closely associated with new ideas about informal family interaction. A case study of houses in Little City provides artifactual evidence about the design program of the builders that is unavailable from documentary sources. Prescriptive literature from household manuals, popular Figure 29. Ideal house plan from the 1880s (Shoppell's Modern Houses)

Figure 30. A bungalow from the 1910s (The Craftsman) A. 'Foursquare" plan B. "Modified foursquare" plan

C. "Foursquare plus" plan D. "Georgian" plan

Figure 31. Little City hybrid plans showing room configurations and circulation patterns magazines and builders' guides reveals cultural trends, but it does not indicate what builders and developers constructed at the local level. Architectural drawings are ephemeral, and if indeed contractors used them, they no longer exist. Similarly, any notes or diaries the developers and builders may have kept regarding their building decisions are lost. It is most likely, though, that the builders did not use blueprints or notes to guide their design process. Because several developers and builders constructed houses in Little City, they did not work in concert to plan a particular house type for the neighborhood. They were businessmen trying to make a return on their investments, and thus constructed houses to interest middle-class consumers.

Kirstein and the builders of the neighborhood were entrepreneurs, not reformers. They built houses that they thought would appeal to the middle-class families they hoped to draw to the neighborhood (figure 32). After all, Kirstein's real estate ad boasted that Little City had 'the right kind of houses." Examining the literature published about domestic architecture in'the years surrounding the turn of the twentieth century, Gwendolyn Wright found that by the first decade of the twentieth century Americans were calling for a "minimalist aestheticn- smaller, simpler houses. "Middle-class families had as much of an effect on the change as architects and builders did. Since their sensitivity to design issues had been heightened by innumerable magazine articles, classes and discussions in the 1890s, these families had a distinct idea of the kind of houses they wanted. The people who designed houses, whether for clients or a Figure 32. Louis Kirstein & Sons' advertisement for houses in Fairmount, c. 1908. Courtesy of the Bangor Historical Society. speculative market, knew this.n3Kirstein and the other Little City builders constructed houses that they believed would appeal to middle-class sensibilities.

In Bangor, Kirstein and the other developers responded to changing notions of family life and building design by constructing dwellings that contained a range of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century elements.

Historians of domestic architecture have described the elements of the ideal single-family house of the late nineteenth century and of the ideal single-family house of the early twentieth century, and their implications for middle-class family interaction, both within the family and with callers. While the middle class may have occupied a wide variety of living arrangements, the segmented house of the late nineteenth century and the open plan house of the early twentieth century were the model single-family house forms of their time, and scholars

have used these house forms to interpret middle-class family ideals.

The rigid room differentiation of the late Victorian house architecturally expressed the mid-nineteenth-century perspective on the family (figure 33). The stair hall embodied the notion of separate spheres, as it acted as a buffer

between the interior of the house and the outside world. It played a significant

part in elaborate calling rituals, and visitors did not usually travel beyond the

stair hall unless specifically invited by a member of the household (figure 34).4

Once past the stair hall, the caller was entertained in the parlor. No other room

exemplified the preoccupations of the middle class more than the parlor (figure

35). Here the family displayed emblems of domesticity and sophistication, to

transmit moral values to the family and exhibit their knowledge of the world to Y.EK?rP.ECTI\'C VIEW

Figure 33. Floor plan and perspective view of an 1880s house (Building Designs) Figure 34. Stair hall (Hiram H. Fogg House, Bangor, 1895-96). Courtesy Bangor Historical Society. Figure 35. Parlor (Reverend & Mrs. Field in Their Parlor, Broadway [Bangor], late nineteenth century). Courtesy Bangor Historical Society. visitors through collections of bric-a-brac. The home was the woman's sphere, and the parlor was her showpiece. Children were only supposed to enter the parlor under strict supervision. Aside from the stair hall, the parlor was the home's most public room. It was the site for weddings and funerals, baptisms and graduation^.^

While scholars generally agree that the parlor articulated the ideal middle-class woman's role in Victorian America, they differ in their interpretation of the library, also called the "denwor the "study." Some architectural historians argue that the library served as a sitting room for the family, so the parlor could be reserved for formal visiting. Like the parlor, the library was located at the front of the house and was restricted to genteel activities. It was not only filled with books, but it also contained globes, busts of historical figures and other symbols that signaled the family's intellectual pursuits. Moreover, the library provided educational and moral guidance to children (figure 36).6

Other historians contend that the library expressed the ideal middle-class man's role in the late nineteenth century. They argue that the library was essentially a space for men, decorated with masculine objects: pipes, boxing gloves and other exercise equipment (figure 37). The "smoking roomwwas another appellation for the library, as this was often the area to which men would retreat after a dinner party, while their wives settled themselves in the parlor or drawing room. '

One late-nineteenth century resident used his library as a private refuge for reading and writing. While Judge John Godfrey did not mention it as a Figure 36. A late Victorian-era library as a "sitting roomn-a space for family edification and interaction (Byron).

Figure 37. A late Victorian library as a "denn-a masculine space. Note the pipes (on the wall above the window seat) and the exercise equipment (Byron). gathering place for his male friends, he did allow his baby daughter Ethel to make incursions into the room. "Last evening you sat looking out of the library window, crowing and full of fun, while I was reading. You are a nice little girl."'

From his descriptions, the Godfrey library did not seem to be a family sitting room, but rather his study where Ethel occasionally stayed with him while he was engaged in some other task.g

Another important room in the house was the kitchen. Plan book authors generally depicted the kitchen at the back of the house, entirely outside the main circulation pattern, as a utilitarian space, to be kept out of view of the family living space, and occupied primarily by servants. Gwendolyn Wright relates that a favorite saying in the 1880s was "Queen Anne in front, and Mary Anne in back," referring to a fashionable style for middle-class domestic architecture and its servants. However, most middle-class women and their daughters spent a lot of time in the kitchen as well. Only 20 to 25 percent of urban households hired servants in 1880. In addition to meal preparation, the kitchen was the center of the rest of domestic production, such as baking, "putting upn canned goods, laundry, and mending. Because of the vast amount work required to maintain a middle-class household in the late nineteenth century, and the area needed for household stores, a significant amount of space was allocated to the kitchen, about one-quarter of the first floor area (figure 38).1°

Popular magazines criticized what they described as the excessive ornamentation and overstuffed decoration of late-Victorian houses in favor of clean lines and simplicity of design. In 1895, a contributor to Scribner's wrote, Figure 38. A late Victorian-era kitchen (Byron) 'The extreme aesthetic tendencies which were rampant twenty years ago have been toned down by this inclination... to produce the effect that rooms are intended for every-day use by rational beings. The ultra-queer colors have disappeared, and the carpets and wall-papers no longer suggest perpetual biliousness or chronic nightmare. I think, too, the idea that a drawing-room can be made bewitchingly cosey [sic] by crowding it with all one's beautiful and ugly earthly possessions has been demonstrated to be a delusion."" This

'delusional" drawing-room was one of the formal presentation rooms of the home that had connoted middle-class respectability in the late nineteenth century.

Middle-class houses in the 1870s and 1880s had distinct rooms for specific purposes. Beginning in the 1890s, "shelter magazinesn-periodicals concerned with home decoration and gardening-increasingly depicted houses that were more compact, with an open floor plan and with fewer, multifunctional rooms.I2

Many factors influenced this alteration in the ideal houses that were presented in the popular press, including Progressive Era reform movements, improvements in household technology, and shifting notions about ideal family relationships. The public health, arts and crafts, and home economic reform movements advocated smaller, more efficient houses. Public health experts, following widespread acceptance of the germ theory of disease in the late nineteenth century, promoted 'sanitary houses," incorporating smooth surfaces and eliminating heavy draperies and ornate carvings. These houses, reformers argued, were easier to purge of germs and dust. The arts and crafts movement advocated the use of natural materials in the home and the adoption of simple plans. Writers like Gustav Stickley, the editor of The Craftsman magazine, for instance, wanted to improve the home through "simple," "honest" craftsmanship.

Home economists adapted Frederick Winslow Taylor's efficiency studies for the workplace to the home environment, by simplifying the design of the house--the housewife's workplace--using appropriate tools, and applying time and motion studies to her household tasks (figure 39). Feminist reformers promoted houses that were easier to care for so women could work outside the home in either paid employment or volunteer work. At the same time, conservative reformers advanced scientific management in the home as a way to professionalize the housewife's role, and, they hoped, to persuade women to stay in the home. Their calls for simpler houses were bolstered by the decline in servants, as working class women chose jobs in better-paying factories, department stores and offices over domestic service.I3

Advances in household technology abetted the reformers' proposals for smaller, more efficient and hygienic houses. After the turn of the twentieth century, electrical power, central heat, and plumbing were standard equipment in the middle-class home. These amenities, however, increased housing costs by as much as twenty-five percent. The added construction expenses resulted in smaller houses, which encouraged limiting the number of rooms in the house.

The provision of electricity in the home spawned the proliferation of household devices, such as vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and dryers. Their manufacturers, as well as countless articles and advertisements in women's and shelter magazines, championed these appliances as tools to lighten the Figure 39. 'An efficiently designed kitchen." Christine Frederick included this diagram contrasting a poorly-designed kitchen with a well-designed kitchen in The New Housekeeping, in which she applies Frederick Winslow Taylor's principles about scientific management to the household (Frederick). housewife's work and frequently referred to them as replacements for domestic help. Household manuals had chapters devoted to "mechanical servants" (figure

40). Reformers and advertisers touted these improved domestic tools, along with the reconfigured floor plan and functionally arranged house, as a means of improving the middle-class women's relationship with her household.14

Historians of the Progressive Era assert that middle-class family relationships changed dramatically from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. The alteration of the father's role from detached authoritarian to sympathetic friend to his wife and children recast the family from 'patriarchaln to 'companionate." As more men secured a steady income in professional and other white-collar jobs, they gained more leisure time to spend with their families.

Changes in the role of the mother changed the nature of family life as well.

Women began to reframe the ideology of domesticity from an idealized notion of

'separate spheres," with an intensive focus upon the home, to 'social housekeeping," a means of reforming society by 'making the whole world

Homelike."15Magazine articles and popular literature depicted families spending time together in lively, playful activities, and encouraged fathers, in particular, to engage in recreational pursuits with their children (figure 41).16

The Craftsman offered a cautionary tale to men who did not find time to spend with their children in a 1909 article. It depicted an elderly man on his deathbed, relating to his nurse, ' 'But I have left [my children] no memories, no rare books with marked passages, no heritage of May mornings, of comradeship.

. . . My voice, the turn of my head, the gleam of my eyes will accompany them The Electric Servant WHAT IT WILL DO IN ANY HOME THAT IS WIRED

It will sweep and dust carpets, rugs, floors. upholstery, drap- ings and clothing with a vacuum cleaner. It will wash and wring the clothes with an electric washing machine. It will dry the clothes indoors rapidly with the breeze from an electric fan. It will iron the clothes quickly. economically and well with an electric iron-always hot and no running to the stove. It will beat eggs, grind coffee or meat or turn the'lce cream freezer or sharpen knives with a general utility motor. It will keep any part of the house cool in summer with an electric fan. It will provide an emergency radiator for bathroom or nursery. It will make toast or griddle cakes on the table or boil the tea kettle or coffee percolator; or it will operate the chafing dish. waffle iron. or do any kind of cooking without 'fire or smoke. It will run the sewing machine without effort. It heats the baby's bottle and the shaving cup. It warms the bed. and offers a substitute for the hot water bag that never leaks nor grows cold. It gives you light where and when you want it. without matches. odor, or smoke. and turned on from the most conven- ient point. The Electric Servant does these things and a few dozen others without fuss or quibble. and it never quits nor demands more pay. If your house is not wired you owe it to yourself in the inter- est of better living to have it done at once. We will obtain esti- mator of the cost without obligation on your part

Bangor Railway & Electric Co. LIGHT AND POWER DEPARTMENT

78 Harlow Street, I - Bangor, Maine

Figure 40. "The Electric Senrant.' Advertisement for the Bangor Railway 8 Electric Company to encourage electrical power for the time-saving devices it can provide (Bangor City Directory). Figure 41. A Little City family, c. 1900. Angela, Milton, Eleanor, and Beatrice Clifford. The family lived on Montgomery Street for over thirty years. Courtesy Fogler Library, University of Maine. through life, but they do not know it. They do not care because they never knew me.' "I7Much of his narrative describes the pretty house and garden in which he would have shared simple pleasures with them if he could turn back the clock.

Scholars have been particularly concerned with the relationship between these changes in gender and family roles and the reorientation of domestic space. Clifford Clark and Margaret Marsh have examined idealized American middle-class family life, as depicted in prescriptive literature, and related it to popular single-family house forms. 'The new domestic ideal found physical expression in a new suburban architecture. If middle-class domestic architecture produced in the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century encouraged separation, suburban houses in the early twentieth century almost compelled family togetherne~s."'~Clark and Marsh assert that the simplified floor plan of the early twentieth-century house reflected a new-found desire among middle- class families to spend more time together.

Gwendolyn Wright and Cheryl Robertson agree that the simpler house plan reflected new priorities of the middle-class family, but they do not argue that the open plan necessarily suggested an integrated family model. Wright contends that middle-class women wanted more efficient houses so they could have more time to spend outside of the home, either working or in volunteer organizations, or at least spend less time on domestic chores to otherwise improve home life.lg Robertson asserts that the open-plan house did not inevitably reinforce family togetherness. 'The informality and sharing of space characteristic of the compact home of the suburbs can be interpreted, too, as accommodations to the absence of servants in the middle-class abode rather than as a desire by husbands for greater integrati~n."~"Many bungalows, she argues, included dens, which she identifies as a male-segregated space for the head of household.

Most historians of Progressive Era domestic architecture, however, argue that the ideal middle-class house of the early twentieth century had only three rooms on the first floor-the living room, the dining room and the kitchen.

Housing reformers advocated that the living room replace the rooms that were associated with gender-specific activities, the parlor and the library, as well as the room that buffered the interior of the house from unwanted visitors, the stair hall. In addition, the kitchen assumed greater importance in the reform literature, where it was depicted within the main circulation at tern.^'

Housing reformers almost completely eliminated the stair hall in the ideal homes they put forward in the early twentieth century. In bungalows and other

Progressive Era single-family houses depicted in the prescriptive literature, visitors could walk directly into the living room. Historians have attributed the elimination of the stair hall to the decline in the practice of social calling, the decreased number of servants, the fact that most early twentieth-century middle- class housing was located in homogenous suburbs, thereby reducing the need to screen visitors, and to the invention of the telephone, which also allowed for screening visitors (figure 42).22

Another striking change in floor plans published in early twentieth-century magazines and plan books was that the parlor had nearly disappeared from the - ..-1 1 SIX ROOMS AND BIG PORCH I

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Figure 42. Floor plan and perspective view of an early twentieth-century house. Note that the front entry of the house is directly into living room (Sears, Roebuck & Co. Modern Homes Catalog). early twentieth-century house. The living room supplanted the parlor, indicating a shift in attitude regarding the relationships among family members. The stiffly formal parlor was an unwelcome place for children, while the living room was expressly intended as a place for family contact. Gustav Stickley wrote:

A large and simply furnished living room, where the business of home life may be carried on freely and with pleasure, may well occupy all the space ordinarily partitioned into small rooms, conventionally planned to meet supposed requirements. . . . It is the place where children grow and thrive, and gain their first impressions of life and of the world. It is the place to which a man comes home when his day's work is done, and where he wishes to find himself comfortable and at ease. " (figure 43).

The living room also became the site for entertaining callers, and major life rituals moved outside of the home, to semi-public institutions such as churches and funeral parlors.24

The focus of mother's activity, as portrayed in shelter magazines and domestic manuals, was now the kitchen, which moved into the main circulation pattern of the house. Housing reformers promoted a practical kitchen layout and the latest appliances to help the woman to complete her housework efficiently, often without the aid of full-time servants. The well-ordered kitchen thus allowed her to spend more time with her husband and children cultivating genial relationships, as well as pursuing activities outside the home. "In the little house where the housewife does much of her own work, many hours of her day are necessarily spent in the kitchen. It is her workshop. . . . Should not every care and thought be put into the arrangement of all its fixtures so that the work can be reduced to the minim~m?"~'In addition to advocating for a rationally planned Figure 44. An early twentieth-century kitchen (Sears, Roebuck & Co. Modem Homes Catalog) kitchen, reformers recommended smaller kitchens, to save steps and lighten the housewife's workload. The average kitchen in 1920 was about one-third the size of the average kitchen in 1876. Sanitarians insisted that kitchens should be scrupulously clean to fight dirt and germs. Home economists compared the kitchen to a laboratory or a ship's galley, suggesting the streamlined nature and orderly production capabilities of the rationally-planned kitchen (figure 44).26

Historians of domestic architecture concur about the evolution of the parlor into the living room and the increased importance accorded to the kitchen in the prescriptive literature after the turn of the twentieth century. However, they disagree about the persistence of libraries or dens in the Progressive Era single- family house. Clark and Wright contend that the function of the library, like the hall, was absorbed by the living room.27 They assert that living and dining rooms often included built-in bookcases to house the family's collection of books, and sometimes contained a window seat or an inglenook as a quiet place for reading. Marsh, Robertson and Candace Volz maintain that libraries-more frequently referred to as "densn in the early twentieth century--continued to appear in house plan books and shelter magazines, and that they were generally intended as a room for the male head of ho~sehold.~'

The differing interpretations of the early twentieth-century floor plans may be due to the diversity of opinions in the advice literature about the appropriate type of house for the middle-class family. While Stickley and other reformers fervently promoted the open-plan house as the ideal house for engendering family togetherness, other writers lamented the decline of private spaces within the house. Charles Edward Hooper, an architectural style book author, wrote,

'Of late years it has become the custom to speak of the family room as the 'living

room,' which term is surely appropriate. When Mrs. Jones calls to talk over the

matter of church fairs or the rummage sale with the lady of the house, the man of the house is apt to retire to the kitchen, if no better place be provided, and hob-

nob with the family cat."" The wide range of views about the arrangement of

domestic space points to the need for physical evidence to supplement the written record about middle-class domestic architecture.

The extant houses in Little City contain a variety of floor plans illustrating

the neighborhood's builders' attempts to appeal to both middle-class families

interested in more informal familial relationships as well as to those more

comfortable with traditional domestic hierarchies. All of the houses contained

both open plan elements and segmented plan elements; the rooms and their

arrangements in the plans reveal builders' perceptions of middle-class families'

values regarding privacy and family interaction. The retention of the stair hall in

all of the plans conveys that builders presumed Bangor families wanted houses

that preserved separation between the privacy of the home and the outside

world. However, about half of the houses in the study demonstrate the builders'

beliefs that some families wanted houses fostering an integrated family

environment. The other plans reveal that builders took into account purchasers

who would prefer a more traditional domestic spatial organization. While these

plans included open plan elements that were meant to reinforce casual

relationships among family members, they also retained segmented plan elements that reflected earlier ideas about the proper relationship between parents and their children. That is, the builders of Little City constructed some houses to appeal to families embracing a middle-class ideal that involved a more convivial relationship between parents and their children, but they also built houses that would appeal to families that preferred Victorian conventions of ritual interchange among family members.

An analysis of twenty-one floor plans for houses constructed in Little City reveals four types of room configuration, all of which contain both Victorian and

Progressive elements (figure 45).= Because Little City's builders almost certainly consulted pattern books, house catalogs, and popular periodicals in choosing which types of houses to build, room terminology from plan books and house catalogs published between 1900 and 1920 helps to sort out room configuration in Little City houses. The "foursquarenplan contains an entry hall, a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen in a circular pattern. The "modified foursquaren plan is also in a circular pattern, but it contains an extra room in addition to the living room, dining room, and kitchen. In the "foursquare plusn plan, the entry hall segregates the extra room, while the others are arranged in a circular pattern. In the 'Georgiann plan, the rooms do not communicate with each other; instead, there is a linear pattern of movement. These rooms and their placement in the floor plan convey information about privacy and expected patterns of family interaction.

While room names and circulation patterns cannot tell us how families interacted, or even how they used particular rooms, they do convey how the I u I Porch I 4

A. "Foursqaure"plan (52%) B. 'Modified foursquare" plan (14%)

LL-I- H--:--

C. 'Foursquare- plus" plan (24%) D. "Georgian"plan (10%) Figure 45. Little City hybrid plans with frequency of occurrence builders of those houses interpreted the architectural needs of the middle-class family. Many of these houses were built on speculation. While contractors and builders undoubtedly consulted pattern books in choosing which types of houses to build, they were selective in their choice of plans. They decided upon a limited number of plans, which did not conform to the ones that occurred most frequently in published sources. For example, while the bungalow was very popular in the plan literature of the early twentieth century, there are only three bungalows (out of 139 houses) in Little City, and very few in Bangor generally.

The floor plans chosen by Little City builders indicate a preference for retaining certain traditional forms of room arrangement. First, all of the Little City houses in the sample retain a stair hall; it is not possible to walk directly into the living room of a house in Little City as depicted in many house plans in the early twentieth century. This vestigial hall indicates that the builders did not believe

that the middle-class families who were moving into these houses were ready to , discard the neutral zone between the privacy of their homes and the outside world. The halls in Little City, however, differed from halls of the late Victorian era, however, because there was generally a wide opening between the Little

City hall and the living room instead of a small door leading from the Victorian hall into the parlor, offering a more informal arrangement than the late Victorian plan (see figures 29 and 33). Harsh Maine winters may suggest that the vestigial hall furnished protection from the cold. However, the broad opening between the hall and living room offered little seclusion from the weather. If the builders of these houses intended to provide a shield against the elements, they would have included a vestibule; that is, a small entrance hall with doors at either side

(figure 46).

Second, Bangor builders preserved the multiplicity of rooms common to

late nineteenth-century houses in a number of the houses they built in Little City.

While the ideal Progressive house contained three rooms on the first floor (the

living room, the dining room and the kitchen), nearly half of the houses in Little

City neighborhood had four rooms (in the modified foursquare, the foursquare

plus, and the Georgian plans).3' A comparison with plan books yields information

about the function of the fourth room. The intentions of the Little City builders for

this room are not clear, but builders' guides and house catalogs systematically

label it as "den," "library," or "study." A survey of pattern books published

between 1880 and 1900 indicated that they depicted both libraries and sitting

rooms in their floor plans. After 1900, sitting rooms disappear from plan books,

but dens and libraries remain, although to a lesser extent than earlier. Moreover,

the name of this space changed. Prior to 1900, it was almost always termed

"library," while after 1900, it was called "study" or "den" in most cases, indicating

a more private use for this room.32

The definition of this room as a sequestered space is tempered by the

fact that in a third of the houses that have this room--as depicted in the modified

foursquare plan--it is within the main circulation pattern, and therefore allows

foot traffic through it (see modified foursquare plan in figure 45). However, even

in these houses, the room configuration allows a degree of separation from

family activity. In most of the modified foursquare plans, the entry hall separates 0 not the roof and porch lines of the Shcfficld please you? The heavy overhang and Japanese roof effect give an individuality to this attractive home that invariably plea- its owner. Notice the heavy porch columns and exposed scrolled nfwm How well these carry out the general architectural liner DAscending to the parch by the wide front Meps, one is ~rprisedwith the size of the parch. 26r8 feet. An attmive front dwr and a French door lud into and through the vestibule to the living room. Notice the dze. 26x15 feel. and the aide archway leading to the well lighted dining room Arch A-1. page 109. is furnished for this archway. A kitchen udh pantry and stairs leading to basement md gnde entrance compkte the first floor. From the living mom our urlly wending umi-open -in lud to a central MI on second floor. Opening oU the hallu.ay are ~hreebedrooms md a bath While this picture of the Sheffield shows the ride walls with the double shingled effect. yet when desired siding wthout extn cost will be ~baitutcdfor shingles. For a rubrtmlial. mnvenimt, altnctiw home. don't you think the Sheffield is one of Lhcn best? See Temu on page 2 and General Specifications on pages 12 and 13.

Figure 46. Early twentieth-century house with vestibule (Aladdin Homes "Built in a DaynCatalog) the fourth room from the livingldining room area. In one of the houses, it does

not communicate'directly with the kitchen or the stair hall, allowing for some

buffer from family activity. However, in over half of the houses that contain extra

rooms, it is out of the main circulation pattern, and in these cases, it truly is

removed from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the house, as depicted in the foursquare plus and the Georgian plans (see foursquare plus and Georgian

plans in figure 45). The occurrence of an extra room in the Little City houses

corresponds more closely to late-nineteenth century expectations that the

Progressive ideal.=

However, builders also included reform elements into the houses they

constructed in Little City. Over ninety percent of Little City houses contained a

living room, which suggests that the builders anticipated a preferred type of

room arrangement, based on a new ideal relationship between parents and

children. In the foursquare, the modified foursquare and the foursquare plus

plan, there is a large opening between the living room and the adjoining rooms,

attesting to its centrality in the open floor plan and suggesting that it was

designed as a living room and not a parlor. The distinction between the living

room and the parlor is important, as the evolution from parlor to living room

signals changes in the anticipated role for women, the ideal parent-child

relationship, and expectations for the family's relationship with the outside world.

The elimination of the parlor and the new, efficient kitchen were designed to

reduce the housewife's workload. In addition to incorporating living rooms into Little City houses, the builders generally followed reform literature about the new streamlined kitchen.

The placement and size of the kitchen attest that the Little City builders were following the reform ideals for this room. The kitchen was almost always brought into the main circulation pattern of the house (in all of the Little City house plans but the Georgian plan). It connects directly to the dining room and the hall in the foursquare and foursquare plus plans. In the modified foursquare plan, it connects to the dining room and the den. The kitchens in Little City were also smaller than their late Victorian predecessors. Household guides recommended that the kitchen should be 200 to 250 square feet in the late nineteenth-century, and about half that size in the early twentieth century. Kitchens in Little City are about one hundred twenty square feet, conforming to suggestions in Progressive

Era household manuals and shelter magazines. Apparently builders thought that middle-class housewives would be interested in the reform ideals promoting a workroom designed to make housework easier.

The fact that builders combined Victorian and Progressive housing ideals in half of the Little City sample points to a rethinking of family interaction and social relations in the early twentieth-century middle-class family home. Rather than entirely embracing or wholly rejecting reform ideal, builders recognized that middle-class residents were more apt to "pick and choosenamong reform design ideals. The Industrial Journal article about bungalows in Maine addressed the ambivalence some people felt about reform ideals. Referring to the living room, the writer observed, "How the modern housewife makes it serve also as a company room is a conundrum she has to solve. How the woman with children can hope to keep it in order remains for each caller to note.n34This perspective demonstrates that the middle class did not uniformly embrace the reconfiguration of family and social relations or Progressive Era domestic space.

The builders of Little City constructed houses that they thought would appeal to the middle-class families they hoped to draw to the neighborhood. One of the considerations they took into account in designing houses was the changes that were taking place in the middle-class family from the late-

nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. From the conflicting advice

proposed in shelter magazines, plan books and house catalogues, the builders

developed a range of plans to offer to prospective residents, reflecting

competing ideas about middle-class family life and single-family domestic

architecture. This case study allows us to look beyond model houses presented

in the prescriptive literature to focus on buildings that developers and investors

constructed to entice the middle class to their subdivision.

1 "Boom of the Bungalow," The Industrial Journal (March 1910): 6. 2 Anthony D. King, The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 134-153. 3 Gwendolyn Wright, Moralism and the Model Home: Domestic ArchMure and Cultural Conflict in Chicago, 1873-1913 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 198O), 232. 4 Kenneth Arnes, "Meaning in Artifacts: Hall Furnishings in Victorian America," in Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture, eds. Dell Upton and John Michael Vlach, (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1986), 240-260; Candace Volz, "The Modem Look of the Early Twentieth-Century House: A Mirror of Changing Lifestyles," in American Home Life, 1880-1930: A Social History of Spaces and Sevices, eds. Jessica H. Foy and Thomas J. Schlereth (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1992) 30-31. Clifford Edward Clark, Jr., The American Family Home, 1800-1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), pp. 103-130; Wright, Moralism, 34-35; Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981), 109-110, 113; Katherine C. Grier, Culture and Comfort: Pador Making and Middle-class Identity, 1850-1930 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988), 79-88; Katherine C. Grier, "The Decline of the Memory Palace: The Parlor after 1890," in American Home Life, 49-74. Richard Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Random House, Inc., Vintage Books, 1992), 121-127,250-255. Although the scope of his book ends in the mid-nineteenth century, it contains a good discussion of the evolution of the parlor and its antecedents. Both Grier and Bushman acknowledge that the parlor was often used for family gatherings as well as for entertaining company. In fact, the central thesis of Grier's book is that the parlor embodied the tension in the middleclass family between cultivating family relationships ("comfort") and demonstrating its refinement to society ('culture"). 6 Volz, 35-36; Grier, Culture and Comfort. 85. Grier does not assert that the library was exclusively used as a sitting room, rather that some middle-class families called their sitting room a "library." She does not addresses the library as a gender-specific room. There has been very little scholarly attention given to libraries, most likely because it received scant notice in advice literature. Linda Kruger writes about libraries, but her focus is on the placement of books in the home, and she does not provide a gender analysis. Linda Kruger, "Home Libraries: Special Spaces, Reading Places," in American Home Life, 94-1 19. 7 Wright, Moralism, 24; Wright, Building, 112; Margaret Marsh, Suburban Lives (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990). 29; Cheryl Robertson, "Male and Female Agendas for Domestic Reform: The Middle-class Bungalow in Gendered Perspective," Winterthur Portfolio 26, nos. 213 (SummerIAutumn, 1991): 129; Cheryl Robertson, 'From Cult to Profession: Domestic Women in Search of Equality," in The Material Culture of Genderflhe Gender of Material Cultu~,ed. Katharine Martinez and Kenneth L. Ames (Winterthur, DE: Winterthur Museum, 1997), 75. 8 James B. Vickery, ed., The Journals of John Edwards Godfrey, vol. 3, 78787884 (Rockland, ME: Courier-Gazette, Inc., 1979), 55. This entry was dated May 18, 1879. Vickery, Journals, vol. 2, p. 309; vol. 3, pp. 65, 130. These entries were dated between 1877- 1880. 10 Wright, Moralism, 35-39; Wright, Building, 111-1 12; Marsh, Suburban Lives, 29. 11 Robert Grant, 'The Art of Living: House-Furnishing and the Commissariat," Scribner's Magazine 17 (March 1895): 307. l2Wright, Moralism, 244-245; Wright, Building, 166-171; Clark, 143-153, 162-163; Katherine C. Grier, Culture and Comfort, 64-88; Volz, 27-33. 13 Wright, Moralism, 231-244; Wright, Building, 158171; Gwendolyn Wright, 'Sweet and Clean: The Domestic Landscape in the Progressive Era," Landscape 20:1 (October 1975): 3841; Clark, 131-170; David Handlin, 'Efficiency and the American Home," Architectural Association Quarterly (Winter 1973): 50-54; Cheryl Robertson, 'From Cult to Profession," 75-109; Nancy Kimball Tomes, The Gospel of Gems, Men, Women and the Microbe in American Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 131-1 54; Susan Strasser, Never Done: A History of American Housework (New York: Pantheon Ws,1982), 162-179; Suellen Hoy, Chasing Dirt: The American Pursuit of Cleanliness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995),154-155. Mary Pattison and Christine Frederick advocated scientific management in home economic manuals. See Mary Pattison, The Business of Home Management: The Principles of Domestic Engineering (New York, 1915), and Christine Frederick, The New Housekeeping: Efficiency Studies in Home Management (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1913). See also Isabel Bevier, Handbook of Housekeeping (Chicago: American School of Home Economics, 1914), Isabel Bevier, The House: Its Plan, Decoration and Care (Chicago: American School of Home Economics, 1914), Carleton John Lynde, Physics of the Household (New York: Macmillan, 1914) and Lionel Robertson, The Healthful House (Battle Creek, MI: Good Health Publishing Co., 1917). l4Wright, Moralism, 235-240; Wright, Building, 159-174. Strasser, 67-124, 202-223.Ruth Schwartz Cowan demonstrates that household technology did not free up time for woman who wanted more independence from household chores. Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 69-101, l5l-l9l. In addition to Pattison and Frederick, a sample of household manuals that discuss appliances in detail are Ethel Rose Peyser, Cheating the Junk- Pile: the Purchase and Maintenance of Household Equipments (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., ca. lgZ!), Lillian Purdy Goldsborough, The Modem Home (New York: The McCall Co., 1922) and Mildred Maddocks Bentley, Good Housekeeping's Book of Housekeeping: New Ways of Handling the Familiar Routine of Housework (New York: Good Housekeeping Magazine, 1924). 15 Frances Willard, How to Win: A Book for Gids (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1886), 54. 16 Marsh, Suburban Lives, 3240,6748,7683; John Demos, Past, Present, and Personal: The Family and the Life Course in American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 41- 67; Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (New York: The Free Press, 1988), 107-132; Elliot West, Growing Up in Twentieth-Century America: A History and Reference Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press), 2-3. Sheila Rothman, Woman's Proper Place (NY: Basic Books, 1978), 63-81 ; Karen Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist:: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868-1914 (NY: Holmes & Meier, 198O), 93-1 15; Gwendolyn Wright, Moralism, 105149; Wright, Building, 158-159, 171-1 76; Karin Calvert, "Children in the House, 1890 to 1930," in Amencan Home Life, 82-83; Stephanie Coontz, The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families, 1600- 1900 (London: Verso, 1988), 332-354; Ames, 255. 17 Marjorie Sutherland, "The Busy Man," The Craffsman, 16, no. 3 (June 1909): 31 3-31 5. 18 Margaret Marsh, Subuhan Lives, 83; Clark, 131-192. See also Margaret Marsh, 'Suburban Men and Masculine Domesticity, 1870-1915," in Meanings for Manhood, eds. Mark C. Cames and Clyde Griffen (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), 111-128. For another perspective on male domesticity in the early twentieth century, see Steven Gelber, 'Do-lt- Yourself: Constructing, Repairing and Maintaining Domestic Masculinity," American Quartedy 49 (March 1997): 66-1 12. Gelber found that, beginning in the early twentieth century, the male householder "created a new place himself inside the house" by establishing workshops in basements or attics and engaging in home improvement projects. 19 Wright, Building, 158-1 59. 20 Cheryl Robertson, "Male and Female Agendas for Domestic Reform," 123-141. See also Cheryl Robertson, 'House and Home in the Arts and Crafts Era: Reforms for Simpler Living," in 'The Art That is Lifen:The Arts and Craffs Movement in America, 18751920, ed. Wendy Kaplan (Boston: Little, Brown & Co.,1987), 336-357. Robertson discusses the professionalization in the housewife's role as well as opportunities for women outside the home in 'From Cult to Profession." 21 Gustav Stickley, Craffsman Homes: Architecture and Furnishings of the American Arts and Craffs Movement (1909; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1979), 194-197; Frederick, 46- 59; Clark, 163; Wright, Moralism, 244-245; Wright, Building, 171-172; Volz, 27-33; Marsh, Subuhan Lives, 8387. Bridget May points out that not all early twentiethcentury housing styles incorporated an open plan, though they did adopt other aspects of progressive housing reform. She states that Colonial Revival houses generally had a Georgian plan. Bridget A. May, 'Progressivism and the Colonial Revival: The Modem Colonial House, 1900-1920," Winterthur Podfolio 2612-3 (1991 ): 107-122. 22 Ames, 255; Clark, 167; Wright, Moralism, 244; Volz, 31; Marsh, Subuhan Lives, 86. Marsh found that the halls in the early twentiethcentury houses she studied were smaller than their late Victorian predecessors, but that sixty percent of the houses she studied retained a vestibule. 23 Gustav Stickley, 'The Living Room, Its Many Uses and Its Possibilities for Comfort and Beauty." The Craffsman 9 (October 1905): 59. 24 Clark, 163; Wright, Moralism, 245246; Volz, 31-33; Grier, 'The Decline of the Memory Palace," 62-70; Grier, Culture and Comfort, 21 1-221. Grier argues that after 1910, part of the family's discretionary income that would have been spent on parlor furnishings went toward the purchase of an automobile, which fulfilled the family's desire for social display. Karen Halttunen contends that the evolution from the parlor to the living room reflected a change from a focus on the demonstration of character to the expression of personality. Halttunen, 'From Parlor to Living Room," in Consuming Visions: Accumulation and Display of Goods in America, 1880-1920, ed. Simon J. Bonner (New York: W. W. Norton 8 Co., 1989), 157-189. Cheryl Robertson argues that the living room became a 'masculine" in decoration and character. Cheryl Robertson, "House and Home in the Arts and Crafts Era." 343-344. 25 "The Little House Kitchen and Pantry: Planned for Convenience and Comfort," The Ladies' Home Journal (15 February 1911): 25. 26 Clark, 167; Wright, Moralism, 239-240; Wright, Building, 169-171; Wright, 'Sweet and Clean," 3843; Vdz, 27-29; Cheryl Robertson, 'Male and Female Agendas," 127-129; Handlin, 50-54. For primary source material about rationally planned kitchens, see Isabel McDougall, "An Ideal Kitchen,' The House Beautiful 13 (December 1902): 27; Katharine C. Budd, 'Model Kitchens," The Outlook 83 (August 1906): 951-960; A Farmer's Wife, 'The Kitchen That Saves My Steps," The Ladies' Home Journal (15 February 1911): 32; Lillian Purdy Goldsborough, The Modem Home (New York: The McCall Co., 1922); Stickley, Craftsman Homes, 142-143; Frederick, 46- 59,248-257. 27 Clark, 144, 163-167; Wright, Moralism, 244; Wright, Building, 171. 28 Volz, 3536. Linda Kruger asserts that many homes from 1890 to 1930 had libraries or dens, but most of her evidence is from architectdesigned houses, and she does not comment on whether these rooms were male-segregated spaces. Kruger, 101-1 13. Marsh reviewed a sample of house plans printed in two shelter magazines in the first decade of the twentieth century, American Homes and Gardens and Craftsman. She found that thirty-seven percent of the plans had 'densu (her term), but dismisses their significance for familial interaction. In addition, I found her choice of Craftsman suspect because Stickley was one of the foremost advocates of using flexible space in the home. I also felt that she should have included later publications in her sample, because the push for open plans was in its first stages in the years she examined. Marsh, Suburban Lives, 83-85. Cheryl Robertson contends that the bungalow was a masculine house form, because it was decorated with rugged simplicity and male artifacts, and that libraries and dens were clearly intended for the male head of the household. Cheryl Robertson, "Male and Female Agendas" and "House and Home,"342-345. The elimination of the "library" and the emergence as the "den" needs to be examined, with particular attention to its gender and generational associations. It should be analyzed in all types of early twentiethcentury domestic architecture, not just bungalows. 29 Charles Edward Hooper, The Country House: A Practical Manual of the Planning and Construction of the American Country Home and its Surroundings (Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Co, 1913), 151. 30 I derived the most common types of floor plans in Little City from a field study of twenty-two randomly chosen extant houses (October-November 1997). The houses in the study all contained the original moldings around the room openings, which made it reasonable to assume the floor plan was not altered. If the house's residents stated that the house had been renovated, or if it was obviously refurbished, it was not used in the study. No original floor plans of Little City houses survive; Kirstein's business papers were destroyed by flood. 31 Forty-three percent of the Little City houses included in the field study had four first-floor rooms. 32 R.W. Shoppell, et at., in Tumf-the-Century Houses, Cottages and Villas: Floor Plans and Line illustrations of 118 Homes from Shoppell's Catalogs (NY: Dover Publications, Inc, 1983 [ca. 1885, 1890, 19001) calls this room 'library" ninety percent of the time, while it was called "study" or "den" ten percent of the time. Hermann Valentin von Hdst, Modem American Homes (Chicago: American Technical Society, 1913; reprint, Country And Suburban Homes of the Prairie School Period, New York: Dover, 1982); Richardson Wright, ed., Low Cost Suburban Homes (New York: Robert M. McBride & Co., 1916); Aladdin Homes: "Built in a Day" (Bay City, MI: Aladdin Company, 1919); and H.G. Outwater, Designs for American Homes (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1921) call this room 'library" twentyeight percent of the time, and "study" or 'den" seventy-two percent of the time. The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933, reprinted 1961) defines a library as "applied to a room in a house," whereas 'den" and 'stuw are defined in more private and masculine terms. A den is defined as "a small den of lodging in which a man can seclude himself for wrk or leisure," and a study as "a room in a house or other building furnished with bmks an used for private study, reading, writing, or the like. Often applied to 'the private room or office of the master of the house.' " The evolution of the library, study and den, and the subtle shadings of the meanings of these terms deserves further research. 33 An extra room occurs in forty-three percent of the Little City sample, compared with rooms labeled 'library," 'den," or 'study" in forty-nine percent of the plans published in builders' guides from 1880-1900 and seventeen percent of plans published from 1913 to 1921 (Shoppell, von Holst, Richardson Wright, Aladdin Homes, Outwater). 34 'Boom of the Bungalow," The Industrial Journal (March 1910): 6. Epilogue

In a newspaper article about the Kirstein and Sons Real Estate Agency shortly after Louis Kirstein's death, the author depicted him as a real estate visionary. 'Mr. Kirstein spent his last days in a beautiful home of his own in the heart of The Little City which he always regarded as one of his happiest projects, his dream of the big unoccupied tract of land becoming a community of handsome homes, with shade-trees, gardens, the electric car line running through it-all this and more came true, long before he passed from the scene."'

While much of this conception of Little City came to pass, the author's implication that Kirstein bore sole responsibility for the development of Little City was misleading. Many builders and investors participated in the neighborhood's growth. While it is true that Kirstein had a more organized approach to the development of the area than the other real estate speculators, the neighborhood did not fulfill all of his intentions for it. His image of a neighborhood of single-

family, owner-occupied homes was never completely realized. Renters resided in

over twenty percent of the houses in 1920, and in the late twentieth century, the owners Louis Kirstein's home on Center Street divided it into four apartments. In

addition, his wish for a quiet residential neighborhood was partially dissolved by the growth of St. Joseph Hospital, with its busy emergency room and

concomitant traffic on Center Street.

Despite these diversions from Kirstein's neighborhood ideal, both of his

middle-class subdivisions demonstrated that they retained a sense of identity well beyond his lifetime. Fairmount developed the 'Fairmount Improvement

Societyn in the 1920s, and Little City had its own newsletter in the 1940s, which discussed the activities of the neighborhood residents, held recipe contests, and published articles about community activities. The fact that the 'Little Cityn and

'Fairmountn names persisted as descriptors for these neighborhoods into the twenty-first century demonstrates that Bangor residents continued to view them as separate enclaves, which was not true of other early twentieth-century residential developments. 'Homeland," for example, no longer retains its sobriquet. Little City and Fairmount continue to draw the middle class to them one hundred years after the Kirsteins first promoted them, due in part to the fact that there have been few middle-class housing developments built in the intervening years. The lasting vitality of Louis Kirstein's legacy may reveal as much about Bangor's stalled economy as the enduring charm of these early twentieth-century neighborhood^.^

1 'Louis Kirstein & Sons Real Estate and Insurance," Bangor Daily News, 7 June 1924. * Bernard M. Kirstein, "Bangor, a City of Homes," Boad of Trade Journal, Portland, Maine, September, 1912; "Little City News," 194 1-1943, Bangor Room, Bangor Public Library, Bangor, ME. Bibliography

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Wright, Richardson, ed. Low Cost Suburban Homes: A Book of Suggestions for the Man with the Moderate Purse. New York: Robert M. McBride & Co., 1916. APPENDICES APPENDIX A: Occupational Distribution of Little City Residents, 1900-1920 Unskilled workers

Skilled workers

LW whitecdlar workers

High whitecdlar workers

Figure A.l Occupational Distribution of Little City Residents, 1900 Figure A.2 Occupational Distribution of Little City Residents. 1910 Figure A.3 Occupational Distribution of Little City Residents, 1920 APPENDIX B: Place of Work and Homeownership of Little City Residents, 1900-1920 Table 6.1 Percentage of Little City Household Heads Who Worked Downtown, 1900-1 920

1900 1910 1920 Highwhite-collar ~=888%' ~=20 90%~ ~=25 92%3 LOW White-collar ~=20 80%~ N=~I 92%= ~=73 92%= Skilled Workers ~=16 50%' ~=16 44%' ~=20 55%' Unskilled workers" ~=3100% N=3 33% N=3 100%

1 Two high whitecollars did not work, so are not included in the total. One was a prosperous farmer. Ten percent work in the neighborhood, (1 was a farmer and 1 was the proprietor of a hospital); three did not work, so were not included in the total (1 widow, 1 retiree, 1 occupation not given). 3 Eight percent worked in the neighborhood (1 as a doctor with his office in his house and 1 was the proprietor of a hospital); three did not work, so were not included in the total (2 widows, 1 retiree). 4 Ten percent were contractors, so their work site varied; ten percent worked either at Morse's Mill or Day's Spring Bed Factory. 5 Four percent were contractors, so their work site varied; four percent worked at a local grocery or at a tannery on the Kenduskeag Stream (as a clerk); two did not work (1 widow, 1 occupation not given). 6 Seven percent worked nearby (2 in a neighborhood hospital, 1 as a grocer, 1 out of her home as a music teacher, 1 at a slaughterhouse on the Kenduskeag Stream [as a clerk]); one percent $1) worked at sea as a ship's captain. Forty-four percent worked at Morse's Mill or Day's Spring Bed Factory; six percent were carpenters, so their work site varied. Thirty-one percent were carpenters, so their work site varied; 12%% worked nearby, at Morse's Mill or Paine Private Hospital; 12%% worked in the woods as surveyors. 9 Twenty percent were carpenters, so their work site varied; fifteen percent worked nearby (2 at p$spitals, 1 at home as a dressmaker); ten percent worked in the woods as surveyors. Sample is too small to draw any conclusions. Table B.2 Rate of Homeownership of Little City Residents, 1900-1920

1900 1910 1920 Highwhite-collar N=IO 100% ~=23 96% ~=26 77% Low white-collar N=21 81% N=54 81% N=71 83% Skilled workers N=I~ 69% N=I~ 82% N=IS 60% Unskilled workers N= 3 33% ~=333% ~=333% Total for Little City N=SO 80% ~=97 85% N=IIS 77% Total for Bangor 48% 48% Not available BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR

Sara K. Martin was born in Aurora, Illinois in 1961. She graduated from

West Aurora Senior High School in 1979. She attended the State University of

New York at Geneseo and graduated in 1983 with a Bachelor's degree in

Psychology and Sociology. She worked in the mental health and human services field for eleven years as a residential counselor, a case manager, and a volunteer coordinator. She moved to Maine in 1995 and began her coursework at the University of Maine the following year. She is a member of Phi Kappa Phi,

PhiAlpha Theta, the International Honor Society in History, Psi Chi, the National

Honor Society in Psychology. She has received two grants from the Maine

Humanities Council for educational projects to teach school children about the history of the Penobscot Valley.

After receiving her degree, Sara will conduct a preservation survey of the buildings on the University of Maine, Orono campus. Sara is a candidate for the

Master of Arts degree in History from The University of Maine in December,

2001. "THE LITTLE CITY IN ITSELF": MIDDLE-CLASS ASPIRATIONS

IN BANGOR, MAINE, 1880-1920

BY Sara K. Martin

B. A. State University of New York at Geneseo, 1983

A THESIS

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

(in History)

The Graduate School

The University of Maine

December, 2001

Advisory Committee:

Martha J . McNamara, Associate Professor of History, Advisor

Marli F. Weiner, Professor of History

Richard Judd, Professor of History O 2001 Sara K. Martin All Rights Reserved LIBRARY RIGHTS STATEMENT

In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Maine, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permission for 'fair use" copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Librarian. It is understood that any copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission.

Signature: )& h. /&'c~#

Date: bp-d d91